


The Abyss

by AwatereJones



Series: Torchwwod Style Movie re-writes [25]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Movie Re-Write, Science Fiction, non Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:48:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23916310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwatereJones/pseuds/AwatereJones
Summary: OK, it's like a space adventure but under the sea. We have Jack as the boss ... Ianto who does not like to take orders from anyone... especially Jack ... and Toshiko and Owen for comic relief. John is just... well... a dick. Some real susepnse and thriller/sci-fi ahead. For Regina who is the one that asked for this and I happened to have it in my library.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Series: Torchwwod Style Movie re-writes [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/267442
Comments: 17
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brose1001](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brose1001/gifts).



Blue, deep and featureless, the twilight of five hundred feet down.

The sound of a Propeller. Materializing out of the blue limbo is the enormous but sleek form of an Ohio-class SSBN ballistic missile submarine.

The U.S.S. MONTANA.

In the attack centre, darkened to womb-red, the crew's faces shine with sweat in the glow of their instruments. The skipper and his EXEC crowd around Barnes, the sonar man.

"Sixty knots? No way, Barnes... the reds don't have anything that fast." The captain snorts.

"Checked it twice, skipper. It's a real unique signature. No cavitations, no reactor noise...doesn't even sound like screws." Barnes defended himself.

He puts the signal onto a speaker and everyone in the attack room listens to the intruder's acoustic signature, a strange THRUMMING. The captain studies the electronic position board, a graphic representation of the contours of the steep-walled canyon, a symbol for the Montana, and converging with it, an amorphous trace, representing the bogey.

"What the hell is it?" the captain asks with wonder.

"I'll tell you what it's not, it's not one of ours." The Exec says.

"Sir!" Barnes suddenly barks with alarm "Contact changing heading to two-one-four, diving. Speed eighty knots! Eighty knots!"

"Eighty knots..." the Exec repeats.

Barnes says with confidence "Still diving, depth nine hundred feet. Port clearance to cliff wall, one hundred fifty feet."

"Still diving, depth nine hundred feet." Frank calls out "Port clearance to cliff wall, one hundred fifty feet.

Tension builds in the attack room as the Montana surges to intercept the intruder. The exec tensely watches the vector-graphic readout for the side-scan sonar array. The sub is running uncomfortably close to the cliff walls.

In a low tone, the Exec says to his Captain "It's getting tight in here".

"We can still give him a haircut. Helm, come right to oh six niner, down five degrees" the Captain barks.

"Coming right to oh six niner, sir. Down five degrees." The Helmsman calls out.

Their Navigator chimes on "Port side clearance one hundred twenty feet narrowing to seventy-five. Sir, we have a proximity warning light."

"That's too damn close! We've gotta back off" the Exec warns.

Barnes shakes his head "Range to contact, two hundred. Contact junked to bearing two six oh and accelerated to... one hundred thirty knots, sir!"

The Exec is really freaked now "Nothing goes one thirty!"

Suddenly the control room lights dim almost to blackness.

We see only the effect, not the source, as a large diffuse light passes rapidly under the sub's hull. Moments later a shockwave, like an underwater sonic boom, impacts the sub, slamming it sideways.

The bride crew are knocked off their feet, as the ship is buffeted.

"Turbulence! We're in its wake!" the Exec cries with alarm.

SIRENS.

Everyone shouting at once.

The power flickers low.

"Helm, all stop!" the Captain commands "Full right rudder!"

"All stop. Full right rudder. Hydraulic failure. Planes are not responding, sir!"

Power returns in time for the sonarman to get a glimpse at the side-scan display... AS THE SHEER CLIFF WALL LOOM BEFORE THEM.

"Hydraulics restored, sir."

The cliff wall materializes out of the blue limbo off the port bow with nightmarish slow-motion. The sub slams into it with horrific force, scraping along and bouncing off. One tail stabilizer is sheared off and the big screw prangs the wall with an earsplitting K-K-KWANG!

With the outer tube-doors torn off, seawater slams in, busting the inner hatches. Two-foot thick columns of water, like fire-hoses of the gods, blast into the room. Everything vanishes instantly in white spray.

Everyone is hurled off his feet. The planesman flights to recover control of the yoke.

The Captain tries to recover his vessel "Collision alarm! Collision alarm! Lighten her up, Charlie!"

"The torpedo room is flooded, sir!"

"Blow all tanks! Blow everything!" the Captain roars.

The Helmsman calls out "Passing twelve hundred feet..."

"Blowing main tanks!"

"Twelve hundred fifty feet..." the Helmsman calls.

The great sub is being hauled down by the mass of its flooded bow section, its flanks rushing past us like a freight train headed for Hell.

The command crew fights futility for control, everyone shouting and terrified.

"Main forward tanks ruptured!" the Exec cries out.

The Helmsman calls "Passing thirteen hundred feet..."

"Too deep to pump auxiliaries!" the Exec warns his Captains.

"All back full!" the Captain yells "All back full!"

The Helmsman is struggling "Answering all back full. Passing thirteen hundred fifty feet... fourteen hundred... fourteen fifty..."

The Captain locks eyes with the Exec amid the din "We're losing her. Launch the buoy!"

The Exec opens the door to a small box and punches a button. A red light comes on. The Captain takes a deep breath.

A tiny transmitter is ejected from the sub's hell and begins its long ascent to the surface. A second later the sub slams down like a piledriver onto a ledge, tearing open its pressure hull.

There are just flashes and impressions, as...

Seawater blasts down the corridors -

Explodes across the control room, hurling men like dolls -

Floods the cavernous missile bay in seconds -

Bursts through hatches into the reactor room -

Blasts men from their spots in a micro-second.

In the cobalt twilight we see the Montana slide down the sea cliff, its hull SCREECHING like the death agonies of some marine dinosaur. Descending in an avalanche of silt, it finally disappears into the blackness below... a blackness which continues almost straight down, 20,000 feet to the bottom of the Cayman Trough. The abyss.

Above, in the world, the Caribbean rolling gray under a stormy sky. The Montana's emergency buoy pops to the surface, transmitting.

.

.

.

20 MILES AWAY

Three massive Navy Sea King helicopters thundering along.

They barrel toward a lone civilian ship... an ugly but very sophisticated deep-sea drilling support ship, the BENTHIC EXPLORER.

It is a twin-hulled monstrosity with a central opening in its deck, around which crouch enormous cranes, winches and other arcane equipment.

The first Sea King settles onto the helipad, disgorging a contingent of Naval officers, technicians, and a squad of armed seamen. A pantomime in the rotorwash, we see the Benthic Petroleum "company man" Kirkhill greeting Commodore DeMarco, the on-scene commander.

The bridge is state-of-the-art, with computers and sophisticated navigation and communications gear, looking like mission control with its bank of video monitors. The Drilling Operations Supervisor, Leland McBride, and Bendix, the crew chief, watch the invaders swarming the deck below.

"Does not look good at all." McBride says flatly to the room.

Divers are working in total blackness around some sort of installation on the bottom of the ocean. They move through the harsh floodlights in dreamlike slow motion, looking like space-suited figures with their helmets and umbilical hoses.

"No light from the surface. How deep are they?" DeMarco asks.

"Seventeen hundred feet." McBride answers.

The Navy contingent is crowding the control room. DeMarco is hardcore military, brusque and efficient. Kirkhill is a small man with pinched features, wearing a shirt and tie, which on a drill ship means company man and/or dickhead.

"I need them to go to over two thousand." DeMarco demands.

"They can do it." Kirkhill says confidently, then turns to McBride "Get Harkness on the line."

.

.

.

1700 FEET BELOW. A submersible oil-drilling platform, TORCHWOOD II, an island of light in the vast blackness. Its main framework connects two "tri-modules" consisting of three cylinders each. These contain living and work areas in a pressurized environment. An umbilical cable, thick as a man's thigh, runs up from the oil rig into the darkness, to the Benthic Explorer at the surface. In a bubble-like dome port window we see the rig foreman, or "toolpusher," JACK HARKNESS. He's talking (via headset) with two divers working outside... 'John Hart, and Lew 'BIRD-DOG' Eugene.

"Hey, you guys are milking that job." Jskc is accusing them.

"That's cause we love freezin' our butts off out here sooo much, boss." John drawls.

Jack turns from the window and crosses the drill floor. The working heart of the rig. The drill crew, in hardhats and mud-splastered overalls, tend the massive spinning turn-table in the centre of the

chamber. The semi-automated system requires only five men to operate. The others are Lupton Harris, Dwight Perry, Jammer Willis, and Tommy Ray Dietz. Jack hears his names called above the din by Jammer, a massive roughneck/diver who stands a good head taller than the rest.

Jammer was yelling "Jack! Owen's on the bitch-box. It's a call

from topside. That new company man."

"Kirkhill?" Jack snorts "That guy doesn't know his butt from

a rathole. Hey, Perry!"

One of the roustabouts, a wiry Texan, turns to him.

"Do me a favor and square away the mud hose and those cable slings. This place is starting to look like my apartment."

Perry chuckles and sets to the task cheerfully. Jack exits, ducking his head through a low watertight hatch.

Jack tromps down the narrow corridor, his work boots gonging on steel.

Owen's voice can be heard "JACK, PICK UP THE TOPSIDE LINE URGENT."

"I'm coming. Keep your pantyhose on." Jack said as he enters his office, a tiny cubicle with stacks of paperwork, dust-gathering tech manuals and water stained Penthouse fold-outs.

He picks up the phone... punches down a line. "Harkness here. Kirkhill? What's going on? (pause) I am calm. I'm a calm person. Is there some reason why I shouldn't be calm?"

Jack's expression is darkening, as he listens.

.

..

.

The control module is a long narrow cabin like the inside of a Winnebago, packed with instrumentation. At the end is a small bay with multiple viewports. Outside, at a 'Christmas tree' pipe installation, a lone diver can be seen welding. He is accompanied by a large submersible, Flatbed, and by a Remotely Operated Vehicle, or ROV, called Little Geek. Little Geek is an underwater robot which operated on the end of a cable-like a control Tether.

It has a single video 'eye' in front, by which the operator pilots the little machine. The rig's ROV pilots is OWEN Harper, who stands by the window twiddling his joysticks and drinking coffee. His pet white rat, Janet, crawls contentedly around his shoulders. The door BANGS open.

Owen jumps, slops his coffee. Jack strides in. Not calm.

"Son of a bitch." Jack snarls.

He kicks a chair out of the way and slams his palm down on a switch marked Diver Recall. A Siren, blasting through the water from a big hydrophone loudspeaker. "All divers. Drop what you're doing. Everybody out of the pool."

Flatbed's pilot, Toshiko Sato, can be clearly seen behind a bubble canopy. She is a no-nonsense lady who holds her own in the mostly male environment by being one of the best submersible drivers in the business. She controls a hydraulic manipulator arm, assisting the diver, Arliss 'SONNY' Dawson, in his work. Little Geek hovers around them like a tiny helicopter. Toshiko moves the Flatbed arm to Sonny and hands him the pipe.

"Here you go, hon'." Toshiko croons.

"Just in time, sugar." Sonny says in that camp way that tells us their affection was platonic.

They react to Jack's recall, looking toward him up in the control module.

"Dammit, we just got out here." Toshiko sighs.

"There was a time when I would have asked why." Sonny agrees.

Toshiko makes a grab for his butt with the manipulator claw, which he narrowly avoids.

.

.

.

Flatbed moves underneath the rig, a few feet above the seafloor, with Sonny riding on its top deck. It passes under a lit opening and rises toward the surface of the water in the chamber above. Little Geek follows like an obedient dog.

The opening in the sub-bay is called the moonpool, and Torchwood's submersibles are launched through it. From inside the sub-bay it looks just like a swimming pool.

Flatbed surfaces, nearly filling it. The chamber also contains CAB ONE, a similar submersible. Jammer, Perry, and some of the other drill-room boys are helping the divers out of the water. The water at this depth is only about six degrees above freezing, and these folks are cold and prune-fingered.

Eugene pulls off his demand-helmet, revealing a round, boyish face. "What's goin' on? How come we got recalled?"

"Hell if I know." Sonny shrugs back as Toshiko jumps 'ashore' from Flatbed's broad deck and joins them. John is unzipping his bulky dry-suit.

John says with authority "Just follow standard procedure, will ya... flog the dog till somebody tells us what's happening."

Jammer yells "Hey, John, I'll sell you my October Penthouse for twenty bucks."

"Save you money, darlin'..." Toshiko laughs "the pages are all stuck together by now."

Jack enters, approaching the group.

"What's goin' on, Boss?" Jammer demands.

"Folks, I've just been told to shut down the hole and prepare to move the rig." Jack informs them with open annoyance.

"She-hit." Sonny groans.

Jack holds his hands up as he orders "We're being asked to cooperate in a matter of national security. Now you know exactly as much as I do. So just get your gear off and get up to control. There's some kind of briefing in ten minutes."

The whole rig crew is somehow jammed into the room for the video briefing.

DeMarco is on the main monitor, with his aides and Kirkhill visible "At 09:22 local time this morning, an American nuclear submarine, the USS Montana, with 156 men aboard, went down 22 miles from here. There has been no contact with the sub since then. The cause of the incident is not known."

The reactions of the various drill crew members... shocked, hushed, curious.

DeMarco continues to speak "Your Company has authorized the Navy's use of his facility for a rescue operation. The code name is Operation Salvor."

"You want us to search for the sub?" Toshiko asks.

"No." he answers "We know where it is. But she's in 2000 feet of water and we can't reach her. We need divers to enter the sub and search for survivors, if any."

Jack's scowl has been deepening since DeMarco started to talk. "Don't you guys have your own stuff for this type of thing?"

By the time we get our rescue submersible here the storm front will be right on us. But you can get your rig in under the storm and be on- site in fifteen hours. That makes you our best option right now.

Owen, born suspicious and recently graduated to paranoid, leans forward "Why should we risk our butts on a job like this?"

Kirkhill answers "I have been authorized to offer you all special-duty bonuses equivalent to three times normal dive pay."

John blurts out "Hell, for triple time I'd crawl through razor blades and shower off with lime juice."

"I'm here to tell ya', you could set me on fire and call me names." Eugene nods.

"Look, I don't know what kind of a deal you guys worked out with the company, but my people are not qualified for this... they're oil workers." Jack says, still not convinced about this.

DeMarco continues to speak like Jack just didn't "A four-man SEAL team will transfer down to you to supervise the operation."

Jack is angry now as he snarls "You can send down whoever you like, but I'm the toolpusher on this rig, and when it comes to the

safety of these people, there's me... then there's God. Understand? If things get dicey, I'm pulling the plug."

Kirkhill nods as he agrees " I think we're all on the same wavelength, Harkness. Now let's get the wellhead uncoupled, shall we?"

.

.

.

Jack stands beside the hatchway as the others file out toward their tasks.

"When Ianto finds out about this, it's not gonna be a pretty sight." Jammer hisses to Toshiko.

"They're going to have to shoot him with a tranquilizer gun." Toshiko snorts, "Wish we could see it."

.

.

.

A single Navy Sea King churns through the rain under massive thunderheads. The sea below is whipped by the storm.

Four pairs of black military size twelves line up, and... a pair of Oxfords with bright red socked ankles.

A four-man team of Navy SEALs. And a slender man in his early thirties. he's attractive, if a bit hardened, dressed conservatively in a suit and tie. Meet Ianto. Project Engineer for Torchwood. He's a pain in the ass, but you'll like him.

Eventually.

He's holding on grimly, sitting crammed in with the SEALs and a bunch of gear, getting tossed around by the storm. The SEALs are dressed alike in black fatigues. They are muscular, finely-tuned and extremely dangerous special-forces types. The leader of the SEAL team, Lieutenant Saxon, makes his way forward to the cockpit.

The pilot is white-knuckling his stick, trying to hold the great beast of a helicopter in position. Through the windshield, the deck of the Benthic Explorer can be seen below, pitching in a violent sea.

The pilot yells "No way I'm putting her down. I shouldn't even be flying in this shit."

"Just hold it over the deck." Saxon replies calmly.

Saxon goes back to the crew deck, moving easily in the bucking craft. He nods to the others SEALs, Monk Davison, and Schoenick. In the open side door, Davison clips a 100 foot nylon rope to the airframe and throws out the coil. One by one the shoulder the gear-bags, grab the rope, and step out. Ianto stands swaying in the chopper door, watching the SEALs fast-roping to the deck. One, two, three.

Saxon looks at him. "You want to be on that ship, there's only one way it's going to happen".

He's sure Ianto won't go for it. It's his certainty that gets him. Ianto sets his jaw. Then grabs the rope and slides down.

Swinging wildly in the wind like a human pendulum, Ianto fast-ropes forty feet to the deck. he steps away an instant before Saxon hits behind him.

Ianto crosses the rain swept deck with athletic strides not waiting for the men to follow him. His trousers are soaked in the short time it takes to cross the expanse. An air-crewman in the chopper lowers two additional equipment cases using the rescue sling. The SEALs catch them as they swing radically across the deck. The Navy chopper banks and seems to scurry away before the mounting storm.

Ianto does not need permission to come aboard.

This is his fucking boat!


	2. clashes

BLACKNESS.

Then shafts of light become visible, above a ridge of rock. Flatbed appears, trailing two heavy two cables. Behind it, the mass of Torchwood emerges from the darkness, its forward lighting array blazing.

Flatbed is towing it like a tug, aided by Torchwood's own mighty stern thrusters.

Jack, his feet propped up, uses joystick controls to 'fly' Torchwood, manoeuvring against currents and around seafloor obstacles. He is guided by the side-scan sonar display, with Owen assisting in the sonar shack.

Through the front viewport, Flatbed can be seen out ahead.

McBride appears on the bridge monitor, holding a sheet of weather-fax. "Well, it's it Hurricane Frederick, and it's going to be making our lives real interesting in a few hours."

Jack responds via video. "Fred, huh? I don't know. Hurricanes should be named after women. Or our Exes?"

McBride looks up as the bridge door opens. Ianto enters in a blast of wind, wet as a wharf rat and twice as pissed off. Maybe Jack is right.

Jack is surprised to see Ianto's face appear on the monitor screen. "I can't believe you let them do this!"

Jack is unpreturbed, almost cheerful "Hi, Yan. I thought you were in Houston."

"I was, but I managed to bum a ride on the last flight out here. Only here isn't where I left it, is it, Jack?"

"Bum? Who did ya bum now?" Jack grins, and then soberly adds "Wasn't up to me."

"We were that close to proving a submersible drilling platform could work. We had over seven thousand feet of hole down for Chrissake. I can't believe you let them grab my rig!" Ianto snarls.

"Your rig?"

"My rig. I designed the damn thing."

"Yup, as Benthic Petroleum paid for it. So as long as they're holding the pink slip, I go where they tell me." Jack sighs at the image on the screen that is glowering at him in a way he knows too well.

"You wimp." Ianto hisses "I had a lot riding on this. They bought you... more like least rented you cheap—"

"I'm switching off now" Jack sing-songs.

"Jax, you wiener! You never could stand up to fight. You—"

J

Jack hits the switch and the screen goes dead. "Bye."

Owen looks over him, trying very hard not to crack up. "Jax?"

"God, I hate that prick." Jack groans as he rubs his head.

"Yeah, well you never should have married him then." Owen chortles.

Jack nods fatalistically.

.

.

.

Ten foot waves crash through the launch-well, sending up geysers of spray. Next to the launch-well, crewman have attached a lifting cable to CAB THREE, eighteen feet of ugly yellow submersible. It slams violently in its steel cradle as the drill-ship rolls. Saxon and Schoenick hand the gear bags in to Davison and Monk though the hatch under the rear of the submersible.

Ianto approaches, wearing a borrowed roustabout's coverall.

He looks down at the larger of the two equipment cases brought by the SEALs, lying on the deck. Stencilled on it are the words: F.B.S./DEEP SUIT/MARK IV.

Saxon and Schoenick push past him to pick it up.

"Let's go, gentlemen! We either launch now or we don't launch." Ianto barks.

Saxon looks up in surprise as Ianto nimbly climbs the side of Cab Three and grabs the lifting shackle, circling his raised hand to signal the crane man.

"Take her up, Byron!"

Cab Three, with Ianto riding its back, is pulled up out its cradle and starts to swing violently as Explorer pitches. The submersible is then swung out to the centre of the launch well. It sways and gyrates above the furious water below. Ianto drops into the upper hatch.

Kirkhill leans suddenly over the console to look out the window.

"What the hell is he doing out there? Son of a bitch..." Kirkhill gaps, then roars into microphone "Ianto... get out of Cab Three. Bates is taking her down.

Ianto pulls his headset as he dogs down the inside locking levers of the hatch.

"Bates is sick. Besides I've got more hours in this thing than he does." Ianto says to Saxon "A little change of plan."

The little sub is swinging like a pendulum on the cable, and the SEALs, jammed in with their equipment in the tiny space, are getting slammed into the walls. Ianto is calmly flipping switches as she talks.

"Man, we better fish or cut bait." Saxon barks.

"Just hold your water, okay?" Ianto replies, then says to Kirkhill "So Kirkhill, we gonna do this or we gonna talk about it?"

The plug is pulled on DeMarco's patience. "I don't care who drives the damn thing. Just get my team in the water."

"Alright, alright. Christ Almighty" Kirkhill grumbles. He gestured dismissively to McBride.

MCBRIDE

"Cab Three, you are clear to launch." McBride says smoothly.

Ianto reaches up a grabs a red lever.

"Roger." Ianto barks, then says to Saxon "There's only one way it's going to happen..."

Ianto pulls the lever hard. CLUNK-CLANG! The shackle-release drops the sub. It freefalls ten feet to the water with an enormous splash and keeps right on going after Ianto floods the trim tanks. Saxon's team have been slammed hard.

IANTO

"Touchdown. The crowd goes wild. Explorer..."Ianto crows "Cab Three. We are styling."

"Roger, Cab Three."

Ianto cuts on the floodlights and manoeuvres the descending submersible so that the umbilical cable is a few feet ahead on his front port. Moving up through his lights, it will guide himr down to the rig. Cab Three free-falls into increasing darkness. Soon it is a candle below us in the indigo.

Toshiko is driving the tug one-handed, pouring coffee from a thermos and rocking out to the great truck-driving song "Willing" on the beat-box she's got propped up on the sonar rig. Fighting white-line fever in the best tradition.

Jack and Owen come in for a rousing chorus. "... I've been driving every kinda rig that's ever been maaaaade..."

Lit up like a proud Peterbilt, the rig crossed the trackless wastes. We hear them singing.

In total blackness, the submersible descends along the rigorous line of the umbilical cable. Two hundred feet below it, the lights of Torchwood resolve out of the darkness. Now we can see the rig crawling over the ocean bottom like some monster lawnmower.

"Torchwood, Torchwood... this is Cab Three on final approach.

OWEN (V.O.)

"Gotcha, Cab Three." Owen replies "Who is that? That You, Ianto?"

Jack stop singing and snaps around at the mention of his name.

"None other."

Jack's expression is nothing less than stricken. "Oh no... you gotta be kidding me."

Ianto executes a 180 degree turn and cruises over the control module, back through the A-frame toward the docking hatch. The flange of Cab Three's lockout hatch settles over the pressure collar on the rig's back. There is a CLUNK as it mates up.

Ianto drops down from the hatch into the small cylindrical pressure chamber. The SEALs drop down behind him, passing their gear through hand-over-hand. The chamber is spartan, with steel benches, a folding card table, breathing masks, and medical supplies. John greets them through the tiny porthole at one end.

"Howdy, y'all. Hey, Ianto! I'll be damned! You shouldn't be down here sweet thing, ya'll might break a nail." John leers with a suggestive wink.

"Couldn't stay away. You running mixture for us?" Ianto replies "Good. Couldn't ask for better."

"Okay, here we go. Start equalizing, y'all"

HISSSS of inrushing compressed gas. The pressure in the chamber rises. The breathing mixture is composed of helium, oxygen and nitrogen. John monitors it carefully from a station outside the chamber, watching the gauges with a practiced eye. Ianto and the SEALs all grab their noses and start making funny faces... popping their ears with the familiar diver's 'equalization' technique. They continue as Ianto informs them "Get comfortable. The bad news is we got six hours in this can, blowing down. The worse news is it's gonna take us three weeks to decompress back to the surface later."

"We've been fully briefed, Dr. Harkness."

"Don't call me that, okay... I hate that" Ianto snaps "It's Jones… or just Ianto. Alright, from now on we watch each other closely for

signs of HPNS..."

Monk replies as if by rote "High-Pressure Nervous Syndrome. Muscle tremors, usually in the hands first. Nausea, increased excitability, disorientation."

"Very good." Ianto nods "About one person in twenty just can't handle it. They go buggo. They're no way to predict who's susceptible, so stay alert."

Saxon puffs his chest as he interrupts their conversation to add "Look, we've all made chamber runs to this depth. We're checked out."

Oh... chamber runs." Ianto widens his eyes sarcastically "Uh huh, that's good."

Saxon turn away "Well, hey... you guys know any songs?"

They ignore Ianto. Start going over some diagrams of the Montana's interior.

It's going to be a long six hours.

.

.

.

GAS CONTROL STATION - HOURS LATER

John checks his watch, then reaches over and adjusts a value on the tri-mix manifold, watching the gauges. Satisfied, he leans over to the pressure window in the door, checking out the SEALs. Owen has come down from the control deck for an advanced look at the interlopers. Jammer is in a chair, reading a Louis L'Amour paperback.

JOHN

John mutters "Those guys ain't so tough. I fought plenty of guys tougher'n them."

OWEN

"Now we get to hear about how he used to be a contender." Owen tells his white rat perched on his shoulder like a weird pirate's parrot.

John holds up one calloused fist up in front of Owen's face. "You see this? They used to call this the Hammer."

"Owen wasn't born then." Jammer chortles "He's just a little fella."

.

.

.

It looks like the end of a long bus trip. Everyone silent... leafing through beat-to-hell magazines or just staring. Ianto has his feet propped up on the smaller of the SEALs' two equipment cases. He casually toes open one of the latches, then the other. Glances at Saxon. He's reading. He begins to lift the lid with his toe. Gets a GLIMPSE INSIDE, of packing foam, and what looks like a SMALL BLACK METAL BOX. Then... WHAM! Saxon's foot comes down on the lid, slamming it shut. Startled, he looks up into his cool gaze.

"Curiosity killed the cat."

Ianto grins, showing his teeth as he says playfully "Tiger Tails are faster."

.

.

.

John is closing values... spinning the wheel on the chamber hatch. It cracks open with a virgin's sigh and swings aside.

"Y'all'er done to a turn and ready to serve." John informs them "Everybody okay?"

The SEALs nod peremptorily and shoulder their gear. Ianto exists first, followed by Monk, Davison, and Schoenick. Saxon bends to re-latch the small equipment case. He is alone for one moment in the chamber. He raises his hand and stares at it. The fingertips are trembling the slightest bit. He clenches them into a fist and walks out.

As Ianto emerges into the main corridor of the rig, he bumps into a large, dark mass.

"Hey, was there a wall here before? I don't remember a wall here. Oh, Jammer! Hi."

The 'wall' grins down to him. "Howdy, there, little fella."

Saxon emerges behind them and, ignoring Ianto, faces Jammer. "Show us the dive prep area. We need to check out your gear."

Jammer scowls, turns and leads the SEALs in the sub-bay. John and Ianto exchange a look.

"Those guys are about a much fun as a tax audit." Ianto whispers.

.

..

.

Owen is bathed in the light of the sonar display. He is making kissing sounds at Janet, who has her inquisitive nose right up to Owen's lips.

"Owen, you're going to give that rat a disease."

Owen and Jack to see Ianto leaning in the doorway. he and Jack

size each other up.

Jack opts for a jovial approach, his eyes wary."Well, well. Dr. Harkness."

"Not for long."

Ianto crossed past him, his eyes scanning the banks of equipment, almost unconsciously checking, checking... getting the pulse of hisr big iron baby.

"You never did like being called that, did you?"

"Not even when it meant something." Ianto replies looking through the front port "Is that Toshiko up in Flatbed?"

"Who else?"

Ianto leans past Jack to the gooseneck mike on the console. "Hi, Toshiko, it's Ianto."

Toshiko with sickening sweetness "Oh, hi, Ianto."

Ianto gives the sonar shack the once-over. He tweaks some knobs.

Jack finally snaps and starts to rant "I can't believe you were dumb enough to come down. Now you're stuck here for the storm...dumb, hot-rod... dumb."

"Look, I didn't come down here to fight." Ianto sighs.

Ianto crosses past Jack and exits into the corridor. Jack bolts out of the chair to follow him and Owen scrambles in to take over.

Jack catches up with Ianto in the corridor, and through the hatch following keeps pace with him as he makes his inspection.

"Then why'd you come down?"

Ianto stops abruptly to look at a leaky pipe. Jack almost slams into him. He moves on, climbing down the ladder to the lower level. "You need me. Nobody knows the systems on this rig better than I do. What is something was to go wrong after the Explorer clears off? What would have you done?"

Jack is insulted now "Wow, you're right! Us poor dumb ol' boys might've had to think for ourselves. Coulda been a disaster."

On the lower level landing, Ianto opens a hatch into one of the machine rooms.

ROAR OF PUMPS AND COMPRESSORS.

Ianto enters and moves expertly through the dark labyrinth of pipes and roaring machinery. His eyes rove constantly over fittings, gauges, circuit panels.

Jack is yelling "You wanna know what I think?"

"Not particularly. Jeez, look where this is set! Morons." he scowls at a pressure gauge and turn a valve minutely.

"I think you were worried about me."

"That must be it." Ianto's on the move again, and Jack scrambles through the pipes to keep up.

"No, I think you were. Come on, admit it."

"I was worried about the rig. I've got over four years invested in this project." Ianto throws over his shoulder as he moves.

"Oh, yeah, right... and you only had three years with me." Jack knows it's a low blow but it does hit it's mark.

Ianto finally stalls, then he looks up at him "You've got to have priorities."

.

.

.

JACK'S ROOM

Darkness. The door opens and Jack snaps on the light.

"My bunk's the only one I can guarantee won't be occupied. You can grab a couple hours before we get there."

Ianto slips past him into his tiny state-room, the only private bunk on the rig. Rank had its privileges. His hand on the door is just level with Ianto's eyes. He notices his wedding ring, a massive band of pure titanium (something your fiancee might have picked out if he had a degree from M.I.T.).

"What are you still wearing that for?"

Jack shrugs "I don't know. Divorce ain't final. Forgot to take it off."

Jack stays in the doorway. Ianto takes a heap of Jack's cloths off the narrow bunk. Start unconsciously straightening the room.

"I haven't worn mine in months."

"Yeah, what's-his-name wouldn't like it. The Skirt."

"Do you always have to call her that? The Skirt?" Ianto snorts "It makes you sound like such a hick. Her name is Lisa."

Ianto takes off his borrowed tennis shoes and socks.

Jack eyes him, sounding too causal. "So what about "Lisa" then... Ms. Hallett and Brothers... Ms. BMW. You still seeing her?"

"No, I haven't seen her in a few weeks."

"What happened?"

"Jack, why are you doing this? It's not part of your life anymore!"

"I'll tell you what happened..." Jack leans in close, their faces so close they could kiss "you woke up one day and realized the girl never made you laugh."

"You're right, Jack. It was just that simple. Aren't you clever? You should get your own show... Ask Dr. Jack, advice to the lovelorn from three hundred fathoms"

Ianto closes the watertight door, forcing him out. Locks it. he turns and throws his shoe hard against the far wall. "AAAARRRGGH!"

He flops down on the bed, sitting... staring at the wall. His armour is gone. He looks small and vulnerable. A long beat. He reaches over to the tiny sink. Amid the clutter is a bottle of Jack's aftershave. He unscrews it and takes a sniff. Catches himself. Tosses it back.

"Shit."

.

.

.

Jack barges into the tiny head and puts some soap on his ring finger. He pulls the ring off roughly and throws it into the toilet. He reaches forward to flush. Can't do it. Now really pissed off at himself, he reaches into the toilet bowl, wrist deep in the chemical-blue water, and salvages the ring.

He puts it on and washes his hands. The right hand stays faintly blue no matter how hard he scrubs.

"Shit."


	3. looking for something?

The platform is stopped, hovering in place. Like a great spacecraft setting down on a barren planet, the rig settles into the bottom ooze. Flatbed releases its tow lines and heads back to its berth inside.

A photograph … actually a computer-composited down-looking scan from a towed LIDAR (laser imaging sonar) rig. It shows a faint, blurry outline of the Montana lying on her side on a ledge part-way down the canyon wall. There is no detail. A finger points to a flat ledge nearby. An "X" has been put on with a grease pencil.

Saxon is giving a briefing "This is us. We're just on the edge of the Cayman Trough. The Montana is here, on its side, 300 meters away and 70 meters below us. We think she slid down the wall, and lodged against this outcropping."

The rig crew is gathered around a worktable in the sub-bay.

The divers, Jack, John, Sonny, Eugene, Jammer, and the four SEALs have their dry-suits on. The pre-dive briefing. Ianto, Toshiko, and Owen will crew the submersibles. Davison is going around clipping DOSIMETER Badges on everybody.

"This tells us how much radiation we get?" Sonny asks.

Owen pulls back "Hey, whoah... I can't handle no radiation, man. Forget it! Include me out."

"Owen, you pussy." John laughs.

"What good's the money if your dick drops off in six months?" Owen asks.

Saxon is ignoring them as he continues to speak "We'll take reading as we go. If the reactor's breached or the warheads have released

radioactive debris, we'll back away. Simple."

"Okay... Owen's not going... Harris, you can run Little Geek." Jack pats the top of a small ROV, sitting next to its larger brother, Big Geek.

Owen immediately protests "No way! No way! He can't fly an ROV worth shit. I'll go. Shit!"

Saxon continues to say to all present "On the dive, you will do absolutely nothing without direct orders from me, and you will follow my instructions without discussion. Is this clear? Alright, I want everyone finished prep and ready to get wet in fifteen minutes."

The rig crew disperses, picking up helmets and diving gear. Some are studying the diagrams of the Montana's interior layout.

Jack takes Saxon aside as the others prepare. "Look, it's three AM. These guys are running on bad coffee and four hours sleep. You better start cutting them some slack."

"I can't afford slack, Harkness."

Jack warns "Hey, you come on my rig, you don't talk to me, you start ordering my guys around. It won't work. You gotta know how to handle these people... we have a certain way of doing things here."

"I'm not interested in your way of doing things. Just get your team ready to dive."

End of discussion. Saxon is walking away. Burning, Jack crosses to his gear locker. Picks up his helmet.

Eugene is suiting out next to him. "Hey, you know your hand is blue?"

"Shut up and get your gear on."

Nearby, Monk comes over to pick his helmet up off the worktable.

Owen points to the heavy equipment case that says F.B.S. DEEP SUIT/MARK IV. "I've been meaning to ask you what this thing is."

Monk opens the case and shows them an unfamiliar diving suit, what looks like a space helmet, and a large backpack. "Fluid breathing system. We just got them. We use it if we need to go really deep."

"How deep?"

"Deep." Monk shrugs "It's classified... you know. Anyway, you breathe liquid, so you can't be compressed. Pressure doesn't get to you."

John is grappling with the concept. "You're saying you get liquid in your lungs?"

"Oxygenated fluorocarbon emulsion." Monk take a clear plastic box full of O-rings off the shelf and dumps them out. He opens a valve on the backpack and allows some of the fluid inside it to drain into the box. Then he take Janet by the tail off Owen's shoulder.

"Hey!"

"Check this out." He drops Janet in the box and, before Owen can protest, closes the lid. Janet is forced under the surface. She struggled for a second, and bubbles come out of her mouth. Then she casually swims around in there, completely submerged... breathing liquid. John and the others stare into the box, amazed.

"See? She's diggin' it." Monk takes Janet out and holds her by the tail for a few seconds to drain her lungs. Then hands her back to Owen. The rat is annoyed, but otherwise alright.

"This is no bullshit hands down the goddamnedest thing I ever saw." John whispers like they are breaking the law even knowing.

Maybe they are.

.

.

.

Three sets of moving lights move outward from Torchwood. Cab One and Three, with Ianto and Owen at the controls respectively, and Toshiko in the Flatbed. Ianto is in the lead. He approaches the cliff-like drop-off and starts to descend "Com-check, everybody. Flatbed, you on line?"

"Ten-four, Ianto, read you loud and clear." Toshiko replies.

"Cab Three?" Ianto asks.

"Cab Three, check. Right behind you." Owen answers.

"What's you depth, Cab Three?"

"1840... 50... 60... 70..." Owen counts.

"Going over the wall." Ianto reports "Coming to bearing 065. Everybody stay tight and in sight."

"Starting out descent." Toshiko speaks "Divers, how're you doing?"

Eight divers ride the back of Flatbed like itinerant workers on the way to the fields. Jack and his civilian crew, John, Eugene, and Jammer... sit across from the SEALs. They are in their gear and breathing from umbilical hooked in Flatbed's low-pressure manifold.

"Okay so far." Jack reports back calmly.

"How deep's the drop-off here?" Jammer asks.

"This here's the bottomless pit, baby." John crows excitedly "Two and a half miles straight down."

"Knock off the chatter." Saxon barks "Cab One, you getting anything?"

Ianto consults his array of instruments.

"Cab One, do you see it yet?" Saxon insists on a response and Ianto rolls his eyes.

Ianto finally responds "The magnetometer is pegged. Side-scan is showing a big return, but I don't see anything yet. Are you sure you got the depth right on this?"

Jack's filtered voice comes through the coms "You should be almost to it, ace."

Ianto turns the submersible and...The spotlight flares back from the great brass screw of the Montana. It dwarfs Cab One.

"Uh, yeah, roger that... uh, found it."

Cab One manoeuvres along the flank of the enormous sub, while Flatbed and Cab Three move above it. Davison take readings with a hand-held neutron counter.

"Cab One, radiation readings?" Saxon barks.

"Neutron counter's not showing very much" Ianto replies, cutting off the 'say please' prompt at the rudeness. A Grunt. They are rude.

"Davison, anything?" Saxon barks again.

"Negative. Nominal."

Saxon orders "Just continue forward along the hull."

"Copy that, continuing forward. You just want me to get shots of everything, right?" Ianto is polite, even if he isn't.

"Roger, document as much as you can, but keep moving. We're on a tight timeline… please" Saxon's response is a little more polite, as if he can hear the unspoken reprimand.

"Copy that."

The great black hull of the Montana recedes into the darkness beyond the puny beams of their lights. It seems bigger than the Titanic and just as eerie in its final resting place. On it side, the sub's top deck becomes a wall along which the tiny submersibles are moving. Ahead, in the lights, is a white painted circle.

"That's the midship hatch." Saxon says suddenly "You see it, Cab Three?"

"Roger, I see it." Owen replies.

"Just get around so your lights are on the hatch." Jack asks.

"Check." Owen nods "Then I just hang with these guys, right?"

Saxon replies instead of Jack "Right."

"How do you want me?" Toshiko asks.

"Just hold above it." Saxon is polite again, then says "Alright, A team."

Davison, Schoenick, and Monk unhook their short whip-umbilicals from the central manifold and roll off the side of Flatbed. They manoeuvre down toward the sub's hatch. Owen guides Cab Three in closer to the hatch area.

Owen turns to Perry back in the lockout chamber, ready to launch Little Geek. The ROV has a handheld neutron-counter gripped in its manipulator arm.

"Stand by on the ROV." Monk says.

"Perry, stand by on the ROV." Owen says then says to Little Geek "Sorry about this, little buddy. Better you than me, know what I mean?"

Owen nods and Perry drops Little Geek through the hatch into the water and feeds out a length of tether. Owen picks up the control box and watches the video screen, guiding the ROV toward the Montana's hatch.

The three SEALs have unlatched the deck cover and revealed the hatch. They open the out hatch and Monk swims down into to narrow escape trunk. He bangs on the inner hatch with a wrench, listening carefully with his helmet pressed against it. "It's flooded. Alright, I'm opening her up."

Straining hard in the confined space, he get the lower hatch open, then swims backs out immediately. He gestures to Owen, via Little Geek's vision, and Owen flies the ROV into the hatch.

Meanwhile Cab One and Flatbed have proceeded forward along the hull. Beyond Ianto's front port, the great hatches of the Trident missile tubes roll toward us in procession. Several of the hatch covers have been forced partway open by the warping of the hull.

"Radiation is nominal. The warheads must still be intact" Saxon says, reading something off screen.

"How many are there?" Ianto asks.

"24 Trident missiles. Eight MIRVs per missile." Saxon replies.

"That's 192 warheads... And how powerful are they?" Ianto asks with a look of shock.

Schoenick replies with vigour "Your MIRV is a tactical nuke, 50 kilotons nominal yield. Say ten times Hiroshima."

"Jesus Christ..." Ianto gasps "this is World War Three in a can."

"Let's knock off the chatter, please." Saxon orders… politely. He seems to be getting it.

LITTLE GEEK'S CAMERA ON VIDEO SCREEN.

Passing through a hatch, into a large grotto filled with pipes and machinery.

The engine room.

"Getting a reading?" Monk asks.

"It's twitching but it's below the line you said was safe." Owen assures him.

Monk moves into the opening. "Alright. Let's get in there."

Davison and Schoenick follow him through the escape trunk, into the dark corridor beyond.

Out of the darkness ahead emerges the trailing edge of the sail, big as a five-story building. Far below her, Flatbed moves along the edge of the ledge which supports the vast sub. Its lights, and Ianto's strobes, reveal the tremendous damage to the forward section as they pass the sail. The torn and twisted hull looms above Flatbed as it sets down.

Saxon indicated an enormous rent where the bow section is almost torn away from the rest of the hull "We'll go in through that large breach."

"Let's go, guys." Jack's team leaves Flatbed, swimming forward. The opening is a black mouth in their lights. Saxon moves inside. Jack attaches one end of an orange nylon line to a piece of pipe and moves into the wreck behind him.

"Take it slow, stay on the line, and stay in sight. Watch for hatches that could close on you, or any loose equipment that could fall." Jack is in charge here.

Jammer, John, Eugene, and Sonny follow him inside.

They find themselves in the forward berthing compartment with its rows of bunks. The room is twisted and dishevelled, with bedding hanging from the bunks like the lolling tongues of dead dogs.

Papers float in gentle eddying currents, letters, pages from paperback novels, photos of girlfriends. Jack pays out the line and follows Saxon forward. As they pass sealed doors, Saxon pounds with a tool, listening. All flooded.

.

.

Monk leads his team along a corridor, following Little Geek's tether. Through a hatch into the engine room. Their lights play over flooded machinery.

.

.

From the berthing Saxon's team swims up a companionway towards the attack centre. He pulls at a buckled watertight door.

"It's jammed. Give me a hand."

Jammer and Jack squeeze in around Saxon. Together they wrench the door open on its squealing hinges. It gives way suddenly, flying open. The suction pulls something through. It slams Jack's shoulder. He turns. A FACE...RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM! He jerks back, gasping.

Face to face with Barnes, the sonarman. The ensign seems unmarked, merely dismayed at his own mortality, judging from his wide eyes and mouth. Saxon reaches past Jack and pushes the ensign's body out of the way.

"Alright, let's keep moving. We knew we were going to see this." Saxon tries to sound controlled but that rattled him too.

They enter the control room. Their lights play over the high-tech wreckage. Floating debris and bodies make shifting shadows on the walls as they swirl in the currents. A languid, weightless waltz. They move through the carnage. Their lights pick out tableaux... the planesman still strapped in his chair, someone jammed into the ceiling pipes, hanging down. Dead faces, pale in the lights. Still. We see only glimpses.

Saxon locates the captain's body and rolls it over. Removes the missile arming key which hangs on a chain around the dead man's neck. Moves on. All business. Jack turns back to his guys. Checking them. He notices Jammer is breathing so rapidly he's fogging his helmet. John, Eugene, and Sonny aren't much better. A wave a panic seems imminent.

"How you guys doing?" Jack asks.

"I'm alright, I'm dealing." Sonny shrugs.

"Triple time sounds like a lotta money, Jack. It ain't. I'm sorry..." John admits.

"We're here now." Jack agrees "Let's get her done."

We see Jack working, calming them, talking them through it. He's sweating rivers in his helmet, not looking too steady. His projection of calm to the others is his own salvation.

Saxon pauses in the doorway to the communications room. "This part I do alone. Harkness, take you men and continue aft. Split up into two teams of two. Let's get moving... we head back in fourteen minutes."

Jack leads his team into a narrow corridor.

They search the rooms along the corridor with their lights until they come to a vertical hatch, open. a pit of darkness below.

Jack turns to address his men "Okay, Gennie Johnny, Sonny. You guys stay on this deck. Hook you line onto mine. Any problem, you tug my line. Two pulls. Jammer, you're with me."

Jack drops down through the hatch to the level below, followed by Jammer, who barely fits through. John hooks his safety line onto Jack's with a carabineer and move along the corridor with the others.

Ianto circles the hull, documenting, photographing. His strobes sear the darkness, give glimpses of the dead leviathan's form as his tiny submersible circles it like a bee.

Working from a plastic card, Saxon spins the dial on the wall safe and opens it. He removes several plastic binders... the code books. He also grabs handfuls of classified documents and orders, and a set of missile arming keys, all which he places in a pouch at his waist.

Jack leads Jammer through a long, claustrophobically narrow corridor, tapping on the walls and hatches periodically. After he taps, he waits a few moments. There are no answering taps. They open doors and shine their lights into the rooms. There are bodies, but they seem anonymous. Crumpled shapes in khaki or blue. They undog and open a hatch. Beyond it is the largest chamber of the sub, the...

The missile compartment is the large gallery a hundred and twenty feet long and forty feet high, with two rows of vertical launch tubes, 24 in all. The chamber is divided into three levels by a floor of open steel grillwork.

"Where are we?" Jammer asks.

"Missile compartment. Those are the launch tubes." Jack answers.

They sweep their lights around the chamber. Jammer turns... his beam illuminating a body just beyond the door. A coveralled seaman turning slowly in the eddying current. Small albino crabs crawl slowly over the man's face. One scuttles out of his gaping mouth.

"Lord Almighty." Jammer splutters with shock.

"Hey, you okay?" Jack goes to him. Gets up close to his face. Sees that he's not. That he's hyperventilating. Fighting nausea. Jack grabs him by the shoulders. "Deep and slow, big guy. Deep and slow. Just breathe easy."

"I... they're all dead, Jack. They're all dead." Jammer is panicking "I thought... some of them... you know..."

"I'm taking you back out."

"No! I'm okay now. I just don't... I can't go any further in."

Jack sees that the big diver's breathing has stabilized. He looks at his watch. Checker Jammer's pressure gauges.

"Okay, Jammer. No problem. You stay right here. I have to go there to the end... you'll see my lights. We'll stay in voice contact. Just hold onto the rope. Five more minutes. Okay?"

"Yeah, okay. Okay."

He moves off through the centre aisle of the gallery swimming between the huge cylinders. He pays out the lifeline as he goes.

.

.

Saxon is working rapidly and efficiently, moving from one rack of electronics gear to the next, setting thermite grenades at vital points. As the thermite ignites, it generates an intense arc-bright light and tremendous heat. The circuit chasses melt. Saxon works calmly in the infernal glare.

.

.

Jack negotiates his way through the tangle of wreckage near the far end of the missile compartment. He goes down a stairwell to the lower level. A HUNDRED FEET AWAY, Jammer loses sight of Jack's dive-lights. He starts to get nervous. Suddenly his own lights begin to DIM, flickering lower and lower.

They become little orange candles, the filament barely glowing. The darkness closes in.

"Jack? JACK?! You readin' me? JACK?!"

Jack, at the same moment, is fiddling with the connector cables on his helmet lights, which are dimming and flickering. He hears nothing from his helmet transceiver.

Jammer, smacks the side of his helmet. Shakes the transceiver on his belt.

Nothing... just static. Then even the static dies. Panic time.

He grabs the safety line and pulls twice. Hard. It is snagged on a sharp metal edge ten feet from him. He pulls twice more, harder, hauling the thing. The line severs. Jammer stared at the frayed and floating toward him. His eyes bug. He looks all around in the darkness. Can't see Jack.

Can't decide what to do. We can see hysteria revving up inside him like a flywheel.

Then he becomes aware of a faint radiance flickering over the walls. It is a cold and ethereal light, unlike the warm-white of their dive lights.

It grows brighter. He turns slowly toward it.

The glow is moving beneath the steel grill of the deck, sending shafts of cold light flickering upward hypnotically, coming toward him.

"Jack? Is that you?"

Jammer is shielding his eyes, staring into the radiant source. Guess what, Jammer? It's not Jack. In the brightest centre of the glow,

something is moving, a figure casting strange inhuman shadow across the walls.

Jammer blinks against the glare, his face registering total, outright astonishment melting into terror.

The glare pulses subtly, hypnotically. The shifting shadow falls across Jammer. He finally snaps out of his fixity... Screaming and gulping air he spins away and starts clawing hand over hand through the treacherous wreckage.

His harness catches on a twisted pipe.

He struggles, totally out of control... the big man reduced to a blind panic.

Jammer heaves forward with all his adrenalized strength.

He tears free of the entangling debris. Launches like a torpedo... slamming his backpack full force into the top sill of the hatchway.

His tri-mix regulator takes the full brunt of the impact.


	4. slippery slope

Jack is swimming furiously back toward Jammer's position. The strange radiance is gone. His dive light flare back to full brightness.

"Jammer? Answer me, buddy, JAMMER?!"

He reaches Jammer only to find him thrashing violently in place. A seizure. Jack grapples with him.

"Hang on, big guy. Hand on!"

John, Sonny, and Eugene arrive from the corridor a moment later. They leap into the fray.

"He's convulsing!" Jack cries out with horror.

John checks him feverishly "It's his mixture! Too much oxygen!"

Then they're all yelling at once, grappling with the big man, struggling with the valves on his breathing gear.

Eugene cries "Crank it down, man! We're gonna losing him..."

"SHIT, it's stuck... goddamnit!" Jack struggles.

"You got it?! You got it?" John pleads with fear.

"Yeah, yeah... yeah. It's turning." Jack yells. Jammer's convulsion ends. He goes limp. "We gotta get him out of here. Come on! (to Jammer) Hang on, buddy."

They drag Jammer's slack form into the corridor, hauling their way rapidly back along the lifeline.

.

.

.

Ianto is approaching the monolith of the sail, manoeuvring to clear the horizontal diving plane. Then his lights go dim and his thrusters loose power.

Suddenly a bright corona breaks around the bulk of the sail and something appears right in front of him, a glowing object moving like a bat out of hell right at him!

It is slightly smaller than submersible and we only get a glimpse. What we think we see in the diffuse glow is a translucent ovoid, open at the front with a spinning vortex of light inside... like some hallucinatory jet engine. And it's hauling ass.

Ianto jinks left. The object jogs right. He fights the control as his sub slews around, slamming broadside into the sail. K-BAM! His power comes back up. Righting Can One, he spins to look through the aft viewport in time to see the object racing away in a broad arc. It pulls a high-G turn and dives straight down.

We see the object zip behind Flatbed. Toshiko can't see it. The thing spirals down into the darkness like a hit-and-run drunk, diving along the wall into the abyss until it is lost to view.

Ianto is excited, amazed... dazed. His hands are shaking. Suddenly Jack's voice blares out over the open frequency. "CAB ONE! CAB ONE! Meet me at Flatbed! This is a diver emergency! Do you copy? Ianto?!"

He has a hard time focusing on what he's saying. Finally "Copy you, Jack. On my way."

.

.

.

AN HOUR LATER

Jammer is unconscious on a folding cot set up in the tiny cubicle of the infirmary. Monk, who is cross-trained as a medic as well as a demolitions man, has hung an IV of something. Jack and the SEAL are in the room, the others hovering outside.

"What ya think?" Jack asks.

"I'm a medic, which is mostly about patching holes. This type of thing... there's not much I can do. The coma could last hours or days." Monk sighs with a shrug.

Jack, torn by guilt, gazes at the big man lying pathetically on the cot.

The SEALs, minus Monk, are all gathered inside, debriefing with DeMarco via closed-circuit video.

"Did any of you see it?" DeMarco was asking.

"Negative. But there was definitely a Russian bogey. The Harkness boy saw it"

"Head's gonna go apeshit. Two Russian attack subs, a Tango and Victor, have been tracked within fifty miles of here... and now we don't know what the hell they are. Okay, I don't have any choice. I'm confirming you to go to Phase Two."

Davison and Schoenick glance uneasily at each other.

Saxon is silent. He is vibrating with tension... his fists clenched to prevent the shaking. He is wrestling with the moment, knowing it is, in a way, a point of no return.

"Is there any problem?" DeMarco demands.

"Yes... I mean no. Negative, sir." Saxon takes a deep breath. Lets it out. Phase Two is clearly a big deal.

.

.

The maintenance room doubles as a camera workstation. An adjoining head serves as darkroom. Ianto is glumly reassembling Cab One's camera housings.

"Did you get anything on the cameras. Video or anything?" Jack demands.

Ianto can see that he isn't being believed, he knows Jack well enough to know when mocking isn't far off "No. Look, forget it. I don't want to talk about it."

"Fine. Be that way."

"I don't know what I saw. Okay? Saxon wants to call it a Russian submersible, fine. It's a Russian submersible. No problem."

"But you think it's something else." Jack can see Ianto's exasperation, a rarity for him to show emotion like this "What? One of ours?"

"No."

"Whose then? Ianto? Talk to me..."

Ianto is wrestling with a feeling which is somehow also certain knowledge.

He tries to defend himself "Jammer saw something in there, something that scared the hell out him…"

"His mixture got screwed up. He panicked and pranged his regulator." Jack snorts, still not able to believe.

"But what did he see that made him panic?"

"What do you think he saw?"

"I don't know." Ianto groans then shouts it "I DON'T KNOW!"

Owen comes pounding up, sticks his head in, gesturing animatedly. "Hey, you guys... hurry up, check this out! They're announcing it."

They follow him into the corridor, trotting down to the mess hall.

General melee as they rush in, everybody focused on the TV.

"Quiet! Quiet!" John barks.

"Turn it up, bozo." Owen shouts at him.

_... the Kremlin continues to deny Russian involvement in the sinking of the Trident sub USS Montana. The Navy has not released the names of the 156 crewmembers, who are all presumed dead at this time. Civilian employees of a Benthic Petroleum offshore drilling rig-_

"Hey that's us!" Owen crows.

John slaps at him "SSSSHHH!"

"-are apparently participating in the recovery operation but we have little information about their involvement. On the scene now is…"

"BOOOOH! We want names!" Eugene pouts.

"Hey, hey! There's the Explorer." Sonny shouts with glee.

A Long lens video shot of the Benthic Explorer and the other vessels in a stormy sea CUTS TO a shot of Pete Tyler, the on-scene reporter, in rain gear, clutching his microphone. He is on the deck of a Navy support ship, being used as a staging area from the press, well away from the centre of the operation.

Pete is reporting "-there is a tremendous amount of activity. With Cuba only 80 miles away, the massive build-up of US ships and aircraft in the area has drawn official protest from Havana and Moscow and has led to a redirection of Soviet warships into the Caribbean theatre."

"How would you describe the mood there?" the anchorman asks.

Pete replies calmly "The mood is one of suspicion, even confrontation. A number of Russian and Cuban trawlers,

undoubtedly surveillance vessels, have been circling within a few miles throughout the day, and Soviet aircraft have repeatedly been warned away from the area..."

"This sucks." Owen grumbles.

.

.

.

Jack, Ianto, and Owen walking along the corridor, Owen in a black mood of incipient paranoia.

"What's the matter with you?" Jack demands.

"Now we're right in the middle of this big-time international incident." Owen hisses like the walls have ears "Like the Cuban Missile Crisis or something."

"Figured that out for yourself, did you?" Ianto shakes his head with wonder at Owen's weirdness sometimes.

"We got Russian subs creeping around. Shit!" Owen stops walking, his mouth hanging open as he stare at them with wide eyes "Something goes wrong they could say anything happened down here, man. Give our folks medals, know what I mean?"

"Owen, just relax. You're making the women nervous." Jack sighs.

"Cute, Jax." Ianto is annoyed now, starting to move around them. Fuck this. Jack glances a him and turns to follow.

"No, I mean it. Those SEALs aren't telling us diddly. Something's going on." Owen warns as he starts to run after them.

"Owen, you think everything's a conspiracy."

"Everything is."

Toshiko is pounding down the corridor from the sub bay. "Hurry up! Saxon's splitting with Flatbed! He got me to show him the controls, then his guys suited up and they're rolling."

Jack breaks into a run, passing her.

"Goddamnit! D'you tell him we need it right now?" Jack roars with anger.

Toshiko defends herself "I told him we had to get the umbilical unhooked ASAP."

Jack clears the door in time to see an empty moonpool, roiling with turbulence.

He runs to the edge and looks down. Flatbed is a vague shape moving off.

"Unbelievable."

.

.

EXPLORER BRIDGE - DAY

The sky is charcoal, the sea is a mountain range of gray slopes. Waves thunder over the foredeck, whipped by eighty-know winds. Men in life jackets scurry like insects. Off the port bow, the ASW destroyer ALBANY vanishes and reappears among waves sixty feet tall. McBride scream orders that can't be heard to the crewmen on deck. He staggers back along the bridge railing.

McBride steps into the quiet of the control room. He turns on De Marco. "We're trying to get unhooked and get out of here... and your boys go sightseeing!"

De Marco sniffs with that superior bastardry of someone used to getting their own way "They'll be back in two hours."

"Two hours?!" McBride roars "We're gonna be getting the shit

kicked out of us by our friend Fred in two hours!"

De Marco's expression is infuriatingly calm... icy. McBride looks at his watch and swears under his breath.

.

.

USS MONTANA WRECK SITE

For a second time the black hull of the ballistic missile sub is illuminated by diver's lights. Tiny figures, the divers move like moths around a distant streetlight. Davison, Monk and Schoenick are clustered around an open missile hatch. Using a large lift bag, they are removing the frangible fiberglass, or 'diaphragm'. Saxon pilots Flatbed with increasing deftness, deploying the big arm to aid in the work.

The diaphragm lifts away... revealing the blunt nose of the

TRIDENT C-4 MISSLE. Like looking down the barrel of a gun at the bullet aimed right at you.

.

.

..

TORCHWOOD/MESS HALL

THY ARE WATCHING A VIDEO SCREEN:

A HELICOPTER SHOT of a warship burning, rolling ponderously as it sinks in stormy seas.

_The News Anchor is droning on "Little is known at this hour about the events leading up to the collision. The US Navy guided missile cruiser Appleton apparently struck the Soviet 'Udaloy' class destroyer in low visibility conditions..."_

Men in life jackets among huge waves... Rescue helicopters hovering. Shaky camera work. Wind blasting.

_"_ _In violent seas little hope remains for over a hundred Russian crewmen still missing after the sinking an hour ago."_

SHOT OF AMERICAN CRUISER, burning, listing to one side in heavy seas. Replaced by SHOT OF NETWORK ANCHORMAN.

_"_ _Soviet military spokesmen have claimed that the collision constituted an unprovoked attack. This was denied…"_

It continues. Jack looks at Ianto. Ianto turns to him, expression grim. "Jack, this is big time."

.

.

.

MONTANA WRECKSITE

The divers are working head-first in the missile's launch tube. Monk reads from a plasticized card, directing the other two step by step. The arcane litany is punctuated by the hissing rasp of their breathing.

Davison asks "Separation sequencer disconnected. Next?"

Monk reads their card "Remove explosive bolts one through six in counter clock-wise sequence."

He compiles "Check... removing bolt one."

.

.

.

TORCHWOOD

The crew are still watching. Bathed in the light of the video screen.

_"_ _... just learned that Soviet negotiators have walked out of the strategic arms limitation summit in protest over the incident this morning."_

Jack switches the channel.

_"_ _... US and NATO military forces have been put on full alert worldwide this morning in the wake of..."_

"It's on every channel." Jack switches again. Reception is getting worse as the storm affect the satellite down-link to Explorer. The screen shows a reporter on a city street, stopping people at random.

Their answers are edited together:

A young woman is telling the camera "You just feel so hopeless. You can see it coming, but what can you do? What can anyone do?"

A construction worker growls "Hey, they don't want war any more than we do. You think about it, you say... hey, they love their kids too. So why are we doing this?"

He is replaced by a self-righteous, middle-aged woman. "If the Russians sank that submarine, they deserve what they got and a lot more, if you ask me, and you did. I think we've been pussyfooting around with them long enough."

.

.

.

USS MONTANA

It is now clear what the SEALs are doing. Using large lift bags and Flatbed's big arm, they have pulled one of the Trident C-4 missiles partway out of its launch tube, and have partially disassembled the nose-shroud, exposing several of the MIRV warheads within.

Moving very carefully, Davison and Schoenick ease one of the individual MIRVs out of its bracket. Hanging under a lift-bag in a jerry-rigged harness, the three-foot long warhead is move gently by the divers to the back of Flatbed.

.

.

.

TORCHWOOD/VIDEO SCREEN

Another man in the street interview, tortured by static. "Scared? I'm scared shitless. But if it happens it happens, nothing I can do about it. Right? So why think about it?"

.

.

SUB-BAY

Flatbed surfaces in boiling foam. The rig crew are all waiting. Like a crack pit-crew Jack's people leap onto Flatbed while its deck is still awash and start to work on to Navy divers, unsealing their helmets and uncoupling their umbilicals. Owen and Jack start to untie a cylindrical object wrapped in one of the SEAL's gear bags. Saxon emerges from the hatch.

"Don't touch that. Just step away. Now!" Saxon roars.

"Excusez moi." Owen raises his hands.

"Saxon, we're a little pressed for time." Jack yells, ignoring him.

"Monk, Schoenick... secure the package."

The two SEALs unlash the object in the black bag. Jack an Ianto exchange a glance. He glares at Saxon as they pass each other. Toshiko nimbly climbs the hatch-tower and drops in. Jack swings the heavy hatch up, balancing it, and grins down at Toshiko.

"This ain't no drill, slick. Make me proud." Jack tells her affectionately.

"Piece of cake, baby" she grins back.

He swings the hatch closed with a CLANG.

.

.

.

The big A-frame, massive as a railroad bridge, to which the umbilical from the Explorer is attached. Flatbed rises arcing around the coupling mechanism F.G. Toshiko deploys the big hydraulic arm.

It unfolds from Flay bed like a huge steel spider leg, its claw-like 'gripper' opening.

.

.

.

BENTHIC EXPLORER BRIDGE

An ALARM sounds stridently on the dynamic-positioning console.

BENDIX

Bendix cries with alarm "We're losing number two thruster. Bearing's going."

Deep in one of the catamaran hulls, the positioning thruster motor is SCREAMING like a steel banshee above its usual roar. It EXPLODES with smoke and shrapnel. A roaring fire erupts. Crewmen run shouting in the smoke.

Now a KLAXON is going off on the Bridge as the ship begins to slew in the high winds.

"It's not holding." Bendix yells "We're swinging out of position!"

As the ship slews, the umbilical is drawn off vertical. It goes tight as a bowstring. Pulled to the edge of the launch well, it rips down the side with a godawful screech, tearing loose ladders and floats.

.

.

Flatbed's manipulator has gripped the de-coupling mechanism when the cable suddenly pulls taut. The sub is jerked sideways, its grip dislodged. Toshiko gets tossed around inside.

Ianto is in the corridor with a cup of tea when the whole rig BOOMS LIKE A GONG and lurches sideways. He's wearing his tea when Jack tears through a doorway and goes pounding past him. The intercom blares as Owen yells "Jack to control! Emergency! Jack to Control!"

Jack claws his way up the ladder to level two. The rig BOOMS and shudders as...

The rig begins to move. The enormous skid breaks loose. Start to slide, plowing furrows in the bottom. Toshiko junks the controls, pivoting her submersible as the A-frame looms toward her.

Jack runs in, past Owen, and grabs the mike. "Topside, topside... pay out some slack, we're getting dragged!"

.

.

EXPLORER DECK

The winch man staggers along the railing, blasted by 80-knot winds. He sprints for the base of the enormous crane which supports the umbilical winch. A wave blasts him into the bulkhead. He half-crawls to the ladder going up to the winch-house. As he climbs the winch's heave-compensator slides up and down behind him.

It is bottoming-out with a sound like a piledriver, overloaded by the strain on the cable. It chooses that moment to fail.

GRINDING CRASH OF METAL.

.

.

TORCHWOOD CONTROL MODULE

Ianto has joined Jack, looking out the front viewport.

"Jack … We're heading right for the drop off!"


	5. a bit more

The deck is ripped upward as the entire 40-ton crane is pulled over by the weight of Torchwood. It topples in the launch well with a roar of tortured steel that rivals the storm.

AN EXPLOSION OF WATER.

Underwater, the crane tumbles between the twin hulls. Trailing a vortex of foam and debris, it roars down towards the darkness.

McBride stares in shock at the churning cauldron of the launch well. Grabs the underwater telephone. "Jack! We've lost the crane!"

_"_ _What? Say again."_

"THE CRANE! WE'VE LOST THE CRANE. IT'S ON ITS WAY TO YOU!"

.

.

.

Everyone is stunned by what is happening. Ianto fires up the sonar. "Got it! It's dropping straight to us."

He puts the signal over the speakers and the room fills with eerie PINGING. Jack shouts over the intercom. "Rig for impact! Seal all exterior hatches. Move it! Let's go!"

The rig crew pounding down the narrow corridors. Diving through low

hatchways. Hatches are closed and the wheels spun down. Owen puts Janet into a ZIP-LOK BAG and seals it.

.

.

.

The umbilical drops down in slack loops out of the blackness above, draping itself over the habitat in large coils. Toshiko pilots her submersible feverishly among the falling loops. She banks and twists. A length of heavy umbilical slams onto her neck, tipping the sub.

She manages to get out from under it a keep going.

.

.

.

Through the front viewport they can see the coils of cable piling up in front of the rig. The hull booms with impacts as the massive stuff hits.

Everyone hold their breath as the sonar return-pings get closer... and closer. And closer... An ENORMOUS SHAPE plunged into the floodlight in front of the rig.

K-WHAM! The 40-ton crane hits like a flatiron thirty feet in front of them. A clean miss. Much whooping and cheering. Then...

The crane topples slowly over the back. It rolls down the slope of the drop-off, gathering speed. Then tumbles over the cliff into the abyssal canyon. The coiled umbilical starts to pay out after it like rope after a harpoon.

And they're still attached.

"Oh shit." Ianto whispers with wide eyes.

An agonizing few seconds. Then... the cable pulls taut.

K-BOOM!

The rig is slammed by the shock. Everyone is knocked off his feet, into walls and equipment.

The rig begins to slide. It tilts over the embankment and grinds down the slope of the drop-off in a cloud of silt. The cable pulling it inexorably toward the cliff. The framework twists and slams into rocks. SCREECHING AND GROANING of tortured steel.

All hell has broken loose. SIRENS, SCREAMING, a KLAXON HOOTING moronically. Jack sprints from Control, bouncing off the corridor walls as the rig lurches and tilts. The lights go out. Emergency light come on. He trips and falls, scrambles up, running on.

In the ladderwell of trimodule C, Ianto runs toward the machine rooms.

K-BOOM!

A searing bright explosion in the electrical room. Flames roar through the doorway. He dashed to a seawater hose hanging nearby and starts to unroll it. He sees Saxon and Schoenick in maintenance, lashing down the mystery package.

"Hey! Get on this hose, you dickheads"

.

.

.

Monk is working in a spray of seawater, turning valves to stop the flow of ruptured pipes. Behind him, a wall of flame blossoms through the door from the electrical room, driving the back with the heat. A reservoir-tanks breaks loose from one of the compressor assemblies. In rolls at him, crushing his legs against machinery. The fire roars into the room.

.

.

.

Owen runs into the Sub Bay. The place is going nuts. Water floods from the moonpool as the rig tilts. Davison is dancing across the deck, leaping over compressed-gas cylinders which are rolling around loose. Cab One jumps clear off its cradle and slides SCREECHING across the deck. Davison, running before the 12-tom juggernaut, had no place to go. The SEAL dives into the churning moonpool. Cab One slams into the end wall, then spins and rolls toward Owen.

He starts to run. Drop something. Looks back.

Janet, in his zip-loc bag, is lying in the path of the slide submersible.

Owen runs back. Scoops up the baggie. Cab One comes up behind him. He makes it through the door an instant before the thing hits behind him, buckling the steel doorframe.

Davison is clawing up the sheep skirting of the moonpool. He gets his fingers over the top. Pulls himself up... A steel helium tank slams against his fingers, crushing them, and he falls back. More tanks bounce over the lip of the pool, hammering Davison down into the foaming water.

He doesn't surface.

.

.

.

The rig is sliding to the edge of the cliff. Beyond it... the bottomless pit of the Cayman Trough. It slams, crushing and twisting, into a rock outcropping and stops, hanging over the precipice.

.

.

.

Perry is trapped as the trimodule floods with stunning swiftness. He makes it through an emergency hatch between floors but can't get it closed. The inrushing tide blasts it open. He scrambles upward to the next hatch. Spins the wheel. No time. He is slammed against the ceiling by the force of the water.

.

.

.

In the Drill Room Eugene, Tommy Ray Dietz, and Lupton Harris fight their way toward the door as the drill room floods rapidly. Ahead, the big automated watertight door is closing like a motorized bank-vault. They reach it just as it is closing, but can't prevail against the strength of the motors. they scream soundlessly at the tiny pressure window in the door. We can hear the dull THUNK of their pounding.

.

.

.

Saxon and Schoenick, in emergency breathing masks, are fighting the fire with a seawater hose and fire extinguishers. Smoke and steam choke the dark chambers.

Nearby, Ianto grabs Owen's arm as he is running past and drags him into the blazing compressor room. Hands him a seawater hose. Wide-eyes, he starts blasting everything in sight with water.

"No! Hold it on me!" Ianto yells a he rushed into the teeth of the fire as Owen blasts him with a spray of water, following him into the intense heat. He grabs Monk, who is semiconscious, and drags him out of the blazing room... Owen dancing back with the hose, tripping… blasting him in the face.

But it works. They get Monk clear.

.

.

.

Jack comes pounding down the flooding corridor in time to see the water in the drill room swirl above the pressure window, obscuring the faces of the trapped men. He claws futility at the door. The motors and the fail-safe latching mechanism are on the opposite side. Through the pressure window he watches helplessly as they drown. We don't see what he sees, but we know what he sees. Suddenly the bulkhead next to him gives way and a freezing torrent thunders in. Jack is blown off his feet a hurled along the corridor.

He scrambles up somehow, splashing waist deep toward the opposite end of the corridor where another of the hydraulic doors is closing inexorably. He's not going to make it. He reaches it a moment too late to squeeze through.

Grabs the edge of the door and desperately tries to stop it from closing with the strength of his arms. It doesn't work. The steel door closes on the fingers of his left hand, pinning them in the doorframe.

But something amazing happens. His wedding ring lodges between the door and frame, preventing his fingers from being crushed and the door from sealing and locking.

It resists tons of pressure, denting but not collapsing.

The freezing sea pours in until only his head is clear. "Heeyy! HHHEEEYYY!"

On te other side of the door, John and Sonny come pounding up. They see his face at the tiny window and his hand jammed in the door. Sonny wedges a crowbar in the narrow opening and starts to pry.

"Cut the hose" Jack screams with horror as he struggles "The fucking hoses!"

John whips open his knife and slashes the hydraulic hoses on the door actuator. He is sprayed with red hydraulic fluid, machine blood.

Together they force open the door. Jack is blown through in a torture of water. Sonny is thrown back into some pipes. Breaks his arm. Together they somehow heave the door shut manually, cutting off the flow. John hammers the fail-safe latch home with the crowbar.

Jack lies gasping and shivering... staring at the tiny band of metal that saved him.

.

.

ONE HOUR LATER

Geek moves along the wall of the canyon, tilting up to show Torchwood perched at the very edge of the abyss. The rig is twisted and dented, covered with loops of umbilical, trimodule-A a mass of wreckage. The ROV passes across the front of the control module. Through the front port, two figures can be seen in the light of a single emergency lamp.

Sonny is trying to use the radio "Mayday, mayday. This is Torchwood Two calling Benthic Explorer. Do you read, over?"

Sonny flips some switches on the UQC acoustic transceiver. Tries again. "Benthic Explorer, Benthic Explorer. Do you read, over? This is Torchwood…"

"Forget it, Sonny. They're gone" Jack sighs.

.

..

.

Jack walks down the corridor from control, slowly... as if carrying a great weight. The air is still thick with smoke. The power off... everything lit by emergency lights. Makeshift quarters have been set up in the mess hall, with blankets laid out on the tables, and with folding cots in the storage room across the hall. Jammer is still unconscious. Saxon and Schoenick bring Monk in on a stretcher, and set him up on a table. He is conscious but dazed with painkillers, his led splinted.

"Did you find Davison?"

"No." Saxon replies. He and Jack lock eyes. Jack bites back on his recriminations, but his gaze blames Saxon. He turns away.

"Harkness." Saxon says and Jack turns back to face him as he continues to speak "I was under orders. I had no choice."

Saxon's manner is subdued, contrite. A marked contrast to his previous brusque arrogance. He's wrestling with his own loss, a severe blow to the tight brotherhood of a SEAL unit. Jack's anger is not dispelled. But he can't address it now. He moves on.

In the infirmary Sonny Dawson is rigging a sling over his own broken arm. He cries out in pain, cursing at himself.

Jack crosses and looks down through the grill decking where we can see the bottom level of the module is flooded. John is down there welding, sending shivering reflections through the chamber.

.

.

.

Ianto is working, up to his knees in water. he is covered with grease, tools scattered around. Jack puts his hand on his shoulder. She looks up.

"What's the scoop, Tiger?"

"I can get power to this module and sub-bay if I remote these busses. I've gotta get past the mains, which are a total melt-down." Ianto sighs. Rather than trigger anger the disaster seems to have affected him in a different way. He's accepted the situation now that's it's done, and is immersing himself in technical tasks, which are for him therapeutic.

"Need some help?"

"Thanks. No, I can handle it. Jack... there won't be enough to run the heaters." Ianto warns looking back to his work "In a couple hours this place is going to be as cold as a meat locker."

"What about O-2?"

"Brace yourself. We've got about 12 hours worth if we close off the sections we're not using."

Jack rears back "The storm's gonna last longer than 12 hours."

"Maybe I can extend that. There's some storage tanks outboard on the wrecked module. I'll have to go outside to tie onto them." he goes back to his task, working efficiently with a socket wrench.

"Hey, Yan..."

He looks up at Jack.

"I'm glad you're here." Jack smiles softly.

"Yeah? Well I'm not".


	6. flexing

The sub bay is still a mess. Dark. A few battery-operated lamps. Flatbed is back, floating in the moonpool.

Toshiko and Owen are in deep concentration, piloting the two ROVs in a damage survey of the rig. Jack comes up behind them, check her screen first. Big Geek's Monitor shows a view of the aft section of the rig. The drilling derrick had collapsed across Cab Three, totalling it. A girder is jammed through its acrylic front dome.

"Right through the brainpan." Toshiko says flatly "Deader'n dogshit, boss."

Jack says softly to Owen "Where're you?"

"Quarters. Level two." Owen mutters back, concentrating as his third eye moves through the water.

Little Geek rises up through the open central hatch, pivoting in a circle to scan the flooded interior.

The interior of the structure is a shambles. The lights of the little robot fall upon a figure... Perry. Lying on the deck, almost looking like he's asleep.

"That's Perry." Owen says flatly.

Jack lets his breath out slowly "That's it then. Eugene, Harris, Dietz, and Perry. Jesus."

Owen gestured at the screen "Do we just leave him there?"

"Yeah, for now. Our first priority's to get something to breathe."

.

.

..

.

John and Ianto, in suits and helmets, drop down from the glare of the moonpool onto the dark sea floor under the rig. Walking, they pull their umbilicals behind them and head out through the twisted wreckage. Little Geek follows along like a dog at their heels. They settle beside a valve assembly at the base of the wrecked module.

"Johnny, you tie onto this manifold. There's some tanks on the other side; I'm gonna go check them out" Ianto points.

JOHN

"You watch yourself." John replies as he begins to attach one end of a coiled-up high-pressure hose to a manifold.

Ianto takes the other end of the hose and moves off into the darkness. Little Geek goes with him faithfully.

.

.

.

Cab One is hanging from the overhead crane while One Nigh works to repair it. Jack is nearby, tending hose for the divers and handing her tools. Talking while they work. Owen is across the moonpool running Little Geek.

"Gimme a three-eighths socket on a long extension." Toshiko says, he hands it to her "So there you were…"

"There we were, side by side, on the same ship, for two months. I'm tool-pusher and we're testing this automated derrick of his. So, we get back on the beach and... we're living together."

"Doesn't mean you had to marry him."

"We were due to go back out on the same ship. Six months of tests. If you were married you got a state-room. Otherwise it was bunks."

"Okay, good reason. Then what?"

"It was alright for a while, you know. But then he got promoted to project engineer on this thing, couple years ago".

Toshiko pauses to glance at him "he went front-office on you. Tighten that for me, right there. That's it."

"Well, you know Ianto, too damn aggressive…Son of a…!"

He's jammed his fingers with a wrench torquing down a bolt. Whips his hand out.

"he didn't leave me..." Jac finally says softly "he just… left me behind."

She puts her arm around his shoulders, somehow managing to be fraternal, maternal and suggestive all at the same time.

"Jack, let me tell you something. He ain't half as smart as he thinks she is." She smiles and pretends to kink Ianto's air-hose.

Across the chamber, Owen scowls as Little Geek's screen starts to go haywire with interference. "Hey, Ianto, you reading me? Over."

.

.

.

John is working on one side of the wrecked module while Ianto is on the other, out of sight. Ianto is standing on the bottom at the base of the wreckage, checking valves on a rack of oxygen bottles amongst the wreckage. Right at the edge of the canyon wall. Behind him is a sheer drop to nothingness

"Yeah, Owen, I read you. What's the matter?"

The reply is GARBLED by a wash of static. Then, for no apparent reason, Ianto's helmet light begins to dim out. Little Geek's lights fade. His motors whine to a stop.

John's lights drop to candle glows.

The emergency lights are dimming, like a brownout. Jack grabs the diver intercom mike.

"Yan, how're you doing? Ianto?"

Ianto fiddles with his lights and transceiver pack. "John... I got a problem here. You there? John?"

Behind him, SOMETHING rises from the depths.

It is the little vehicle he almost collided with at the Montana wreck.

It comes right up behind him. He doesn't know it's there. It hovers sideways like a hummingbird, as if curious, trying to get a better look. He becomes aware of the pulsing glow on the ground around him. He turns slowly. He reacts as the glowing, pulsing apparition is reflected in his faceplate.

A more powerful glow washes up onto him from below.

His eyes go down. He gasps, absolutely stunned...above the edge of the wall, AN ENORMOUS SHAPE RISES SILENTLY OUT OF THE DEPTHS. Over sixty feet across. It looks like a blown glass manta ray, its transparent outer hull housing interior structures of great delicacy and complexity, pulsing with a blue-violet glow.

Ianto stand before it, unable to move. Absolutely rapt.

Captivated by its ethereal beauty. It begins to turn, majestically, one rounded wing passing only a few feet above him. He reaches up. Touches it as it passes over him.

Ianto is without fear, completely mesmerized.

The thing completes its turn and dives gracefully down along the wall. He is gently lifted by a backwash of turbulent water.

About that time, Ianto remembers he has a still camera, a little Nikon.

He fumbles to set focus and exposure with his bulky gloves as the beautiful machine glides into the depths. Gets all set for a shot and... WOOSH! The little 'scoutschip' whizzes past him from behind, startling him.

He completely misses the shot of the 'manta ship'. he pivots, trying to get a shot of the little one as it zig-zags down along the wall, fast as a meteor. CLICK. He get a shot a second before it disappears.

From around the flank of the rig module, John appears. Their com-sets come back to life, along with their lights.

"You better not say you missed that" Ianto snaps.

"Missed what?"

,

,

,

In the mess hall Ianto is sliding a film strip between his fingers, desperately seeking the shot. The shot is black with a little squiggle of light in the centre. Pathetic.

"Nice shot, Yan." Jack says sarcastically.

"What is that? You drop your dive light?" Sonny agrees.

The group is huddled around Ianto who has his freshly-processed slide roll laid out on the pinball machine, using it as a light table.

"Come on, you guys" Ianto defends "look, this is the little one right here. You can see how it's kind of zigging around."

"If you say so." Jack shrugs "It could be anything."

I'm telling you what is there. You're just not hearing. The impulses somehow aren't getting from your ears to your brainpan." Ianto is angry now and insulted "There's something down there. Something not... us."

he looks around. Sees a lot of scepticism in the eyes around him.

"Y'all could be more specific." John crews his face up as he stifles a giggle.

"Not us. Not human. Get it? Something non-human, but intelligent…"

"You mean like Saxon?" Owen points with wide eyes.

Ianto is reddening. Despite his conviction, this is really hard. "A non-terrestrial intelligence."

Non-Terrestrial Intelligence. NTIs. Yeah, I like that better then UFOs. Although that works too... Underwater Flying Objects." Owen is not really mocking him. He's actually into it. But it has that effect.

John is eyeing Ianto like he's never seen him before. "Are we talkin' little space friend here?"

Owen is still talking "Right on! Hot rods of the Gods. Right, Yan? Hey, no really! It could be NTIs. The CIA has known about them for years. They abduct people all the time. There was this woman I knew in Albuquerque who…"

"Owen, do me a favour... stay off my side."

Jack takes him firmly by the arm. Heads him out into the corridor. "Ianto, will you step into my office for a minute..."

He propels Ianto along the corridor, away from the mess hall doorway. They face each other in the narrow space. "Jesus, Ianto…"

"Jack, something really important is happening here."

Jack is still gripping his arm as he snarls "Look. I'm just trying to hold this situation together. I can't allow you to cause this kind of hysteria…"

"Who's hysterical? Nobody's hysterical!"

They're talking across each other, not connecting. Jack weary and frustrated. Ianto is cranked up with the afterglow of his encounter.

"All I'm saying is when you're hanging on by your fingernails, you don't go waving you arms around."

"I saw something!" Ianto defends, yanking at his arm "I'm not going to go back there and say I didn't see it when I did. I'm sorry."

"God, you are the most stubborn man I ever knew."

"I need you to believe me, Jack. Look at me. Do I seem stressed out? Any of the symptoms of pressure sickness, any tremors, slurred speech?"

"No."

"Jack, this is me, Ianto. Okay? You know me better than anybody in the world. Now watch my lips... I saw these things. I touched one of them. And it wasn't some clunky steel can like we would build... it glided. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

Jack is stilled by his intensity. He moves close to him. Eyes alive and luminous.

Ianto whispers "It was a machine, but it seems almost alive. Like a... dance of light. Jack, you have to trust me... please. I don't think they mean us harm. I don't know how I know that, it's just a feeling."

"How can I go on a feeling?" Jack asks "You think Saxon's going to go on your 'feeling'?"

"We all see what we want to see... Saxon looks and he sees Russians, he sees hate and fear. Jack, you have to look with better eyes than that."

Jack has been taking this all in. His eyes tracking his face. He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath. It's so hard for him to do this, but "I can't, Ianto. I'm sorry. How can I?"

,.

.

.

In the mess hall later Saxon has Jack, Ianto and several of the rig crew gathered for a little summit. Ianto is withdrawn, sitting far from the others, a self-imposed exile. They're all wearing warm clothes and hugging themselves. Their breath shows in the air.

Saxon is giving orders "I want 'round-the-clock manning of the sonar shack and the exterior cameras. We need early warning if the Soviet craft try another incursion."

Ianto sighs, rolling his eyes "Gimme a break! Saxon, these things live three and a half miles down on the bottom of an abyssal trench! Trust me... they're not speaking Russian."

Saxon looks at him for a moment, then goes on as if he hadn't spoke. Turning to Toshiko "Why haven't you finished repairs on the hydrophone transmitter yet?"

"I was having my nails done."

Saxon is sweating, despite the chill. Keeps his hands clenched in fists so they won't see how bad the tremors have gotten. "Get something straight. You people are under my authority…"

John answers "Look, partner... we don't work for you, we don't Take orders from you, and we don't much like you. In addition to which your momma dresses you funny."

Saxon's eyes are straight razors. He slashes them from face to face. You can see him tightening up like a clockspring, losing control of the situation in front of his own men.

Jack defuses it. "'Fish'?"

"Yuh?" John answers to his nickname while still grinning.

Jack asks "Take the first watch in sonar. Owen, you handle the exterior surveillance. Toshiko, see if you can get that transmitter working for me, okay?"

"Gimme a couple of hours." Toshiko nods.

everyone leaves as Saxon stands … Winding tighter.


	7. we have contact

Saxon and Schoenick are bending over the warhead. They have a small port removed and are attaching waterproof leads from an ELECTRONIC DETONATOR. The black box Ianto glimpsed earlier. As the two SEALs work like surgeons, we see past Saxon's shoulder to a hemispherical window behind him, which looks out into the perpetual blackness. Something appears... a goofy shark face.

Big Geek rises silently in front of the port. It moves a little, trying to get a peek over Saxon's shoulder.

.

.

Owen is twiddling his joysticks, watching the screen like a ferret. "Come on... move to the left... just a little more... come on, A.J. Squared Away... that's it…"

Saxon is blocking Owen's view of whatever it is they're working on. Abruptly, be moves. The warhead is lying there in plain sight, detonator wires hooked up. Owen's eyes bug out. He knows exactly what it is.

"Pretty radical, guys. Pretty radical."

He hurries to the VCR and puts it into RECORD.

.

..

Video image of the SEALs working. It FREEZES on a clear view of the warhead.

"Say hello to MIRV." Owen crows.

Jack has his face right up to screen. He frowns, skeptical.

"Come on, man. What else could it be?" Owen asks.

"Why bring it here?" Jack wonders.

Owen is excitedly spouting "It's gotta be, like, an emergency plan to keep it away from the Russians... Hotwire one of the nukes with some kinda detonator, put it back in the sub, and fry the whole thing, slicker'n snot. Oh, uh... hi, Yan."

Jack whips around. Ianto, standing quietly in the doorway. It's apparent from expression he's been watching them for some time. He looks ready to kill somebody.

Then he's gone.

Jack catches up to him in the corridor, trying to put the brakes on him.

"Look, goddamnit, if you won't do something about it, I will." Ianto snarls with anger.

"Ianto! Wait a second…"

Ianto reaches the watertight door to Maintenance Room B. It's locked. Before Jack can stop him he grabs a fire-extinguisher off the wall and pounds on the steel door like a big gong.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Needless to say, it opens. He pushes past Schoenick, see the bomb lying there naked.

"You've got some balls bringing this... thing... into my rig! With everything that's been going on up in the world, you bring a nuclear weapon in here? Does this strike anyone as particularly psychotic, or is it just me?"

Saxon steps in front of the weapon "You don't need to know the details of this mission... you're better off if you don't."

Ianto fires back "You're right... I don't. I just need to know that this thing is out of here! You hear me, Roger Ramjet?"

"Dr. Harkness, you're becoming a serious impediment to this mission. I believe the stress is affecting you." Saxon drawls, then turns to Schoenick "Escort him to quarters and have Monk prepare a tranquilizer."

Schoenick takes his arm in a tight grip.

IANTO

"Bullshit, you can't do that. Oww... goddamnit!"

Ianto goes bananas, trying to get Schoenick's big hands off his arms.

Jack slams his hand down on the intercom button. "Emergency! Maintenance room B. Emergency!"

He pulls the fire alarm for good measure and spins on Saxon... warning him with a look that is not to be messed with. Saxon is braced back against the worktable... an odd stance, with one arm behind his back. Suddenly there's a crowd outside the door as John, Owen, Toshiko, and Sonny come running up. Confrontation time.

Sirens going. About a million volts of electricity in the air.

Jack braces himself in front of Schoenick. "Let him go. Do it... right now."

He does. Ianto jerks away. Rubs his arms. "You dumb jarhead mother…"-

"Chill out, Ianto!" Jack barks.

"What's the problem?" John asks.

Everyone is frozen in place. Jack a Saxon... snake and mongoose, glaring.

Jack pulls Ianto back into the corridor. " "Nothing. We were just leaving. Weren't we?"

Jack's group moves out of sight up the corridor.

Saxon has his hands behind his back. In his hand, cocked, finger on the trigger, is the .45. He turns and sets it on the table, steadying himself as if in the wind.

He seems to sag. When he looks at Schoenick, his eyes are wounds. A hunted animal. Voice shaky. "They can't be trusted. They're turning against us. We may have to take... steps."

Ianto, Jack, Owen. Jack slows, letting them trail behind the others.

"Yan, stay away from that guy. I mean it." Jack orders.

"Yeah." Owen agrees "The dude's in bad shape... you see his hands?"

"He's got the shakes?" Ianto asks.

Jack stops walking and faces them all, his look on Ianto "Look, the guy's operating on his own, cut off from chain of command. He's exhibiting symptoms of pressure-induced psychosis. And he's got a nuclear weapon. So, as a personal favour to me... will you put your tongue in neutral for a while?"

"Man, I give this a sphincter-factor of about nine point five." Owen tells everyone.

.

..

.

Saxon goes to the dome port. Looks past his shrunken and twisted reflection into the void. Eternal night. Stuck to the acrylic bubble beside him is one of those Garfields, suction cups on its paws. Saxon stares out. Behind his eyes, his brain is like that cat, just hanging on, spread-eagle and screaming.

.

..

Under a single worklight, a couple of conspirators. Ianto and Owen hunch over Big Geek. The ROV grins maniacally with goofy shark teeth.

Ianto is talking "Look, you can just punch into his little chip where you want him to go, and he goes, right?"

"Well, yeah, but the tether off it ain't gonna be fancy. When he gets down there he'll just sit, like a dumb-shit. Unless something wanders through view of the camera, you'll get nada." Owen shrugs.

"Let's go for it. We could get lucky."

.

..

**ON A SURVEILLANCE MONITOR.**

Ianto and Owen next to Big Geek. Their voices are tinny but intelligible.

"I don't know. I really oughta talk to Jack about this." Owen's voice comes across.

**SAXON. Watching them in the dark. Alone.**

"No. Just you and me. We get some proof, then tell them. Owen, look... if was can prove to Saxon it's not Russians, maybe he'll ease off the button a little."

"I gotta tell you, that guy scares me a lot more than whatever's down there. A.J. Squared Away goddamn jarhead robot. Okay, gimme a couple hours on this." Owen replies.

**Saxon watches, his jaw clenched.**

.

.

.

The lights are down. Those who can are grabbing some sleep. Snoring comes from one of the bunkrooms as Ianto passes. In the mess hall, John and Jack are crashed out on the tables, wrapped in blankets. The cold has gotten intense. Water drips. The walls sweat with condensation. Ianto can see his breath as he makes coffee. He carries a cup over to Monk, who is a face in a pile of blankets. A hand comes out, takes the coffee. "Thanks."

Ianto sips his, staring. His thoughts are far away... in the bottomless pit. He is leaning up against the table where Jack is sleeping. His soft snoring downshifts into a loud rasp. Ianto touches him gently on the shoulder. "Jax, turn on your side."

Jack grunts and turns without waking, an automatic response. The snoring stops. It is a quiet, intimate moment, a reminder of the mileage these two have logged together.

.

..

SONAR SHACK

Sonny has made himself comfortable in front of the screens. Too comfortable. He's asleep, chin on his chest. On the main passive-sonar screen, an almost imperceptibly faint trace appears. A HUM, which is by now familiar, becomes audible. Sonny shifts in his seat. Doesn't wake.

.

.

SUB BAY

Owen puts his tools away, finished with the modifications to Big Geek. "All set, big guy. Hey, I told you to wipe that grin off your face."

He yawns as he shambles across the chamber to the corridor door. Switches off the lights.

Goes out.

Quiet lapping of water in the moonpool. A beat. Then... A cold luminosity suffuses the water beneath the moonpool opening, sending shadows shifting across the top of the chamber. The surface begins to pulsate.

Suddenly, the water itself rises, forming itself into a shifting, shimmering pseudopod as big around as a man's body. The transparent form pulses... an amoebic mass shivering in the air.

It stretches, becoming a more refined form. Like a blindly probing glass python, it elongates and weaves across the room. It extends and extends, stretching out from the moonpool, a shimmering tentacle. The 'head' or tip, a featureless liquid bulb, seems somehow to be scanning as it moves forward, as if it can see where it's going.

.

.

.

Owen trudges along the dark corridor. He reaches the men's head and goes in. As the door closes, the tip of the liquid pseudopod extends into the corridor. It 'looks' left and right. Then extends the length of the corridor, holding itself a couple feet off the floor like a weightless snake.

.

.

.

three levels down through the central ladder well between the cylinders. The pseudopod enters and undulates upward.

Sonny and Toshiko are snoring, oblivious. Jammer is still unconscious. The pseudopod, taking its time, checks them out and then moves on.

In the Mess Hall, it's dark and quiet. Ianto has even fallen asleep in his chair, his head buried in her arms on the table. The shimmering tentacle enters the room in total silence. It sways gracefully in to air, searching.

It undulates across the room, hanging about five feet in the air, surveying everything. It moves past Ianto. Sensing something, he lifts his head, turning... sees the apparition next to him.

His eyes go wide.

Amazement, but not fear. The tentacle is moving on, still searching. Ianto shakes Jack awake, clapping his hand over his mouth.

Jack blinks twice, and then freezes. When he lowers his hand Jack's mouth is hanging open like a total goon.

Jack chucks his pillow are John, on the next table.

John cracks one eye open. Turns away. Turns right back... both eyes open now. Sensing movement, the thing turn back toward them. It seems to recognize Ianto. It doubles back on itself in a loop and comes right up to him.

He holds his ground, fascinated.

The bulbous tip forms suddenly into a human face... his face. It is water, still clear and undulating... but definitely Ianto. He gasps in surprise. The liquid-Ianto gasps soundlessly... a perfect mimic of her expression.

Ianto laughs involuntarily. It laughs... without sound. Ianto makes a face, sticking out his tongue... testing it.

The liquid-Ianto does the same. Jack has just had the rug jerked out from under his sense of what is possible and what isn't, but he's taking it pretty will, considering.

"I think it likes you" Jack whispers.

"It's trying to communicate." Ianto whispers back.

His liquid face suddenly transforms into a likeness of Jack's.

Ianto reaches out his hand slowly. Gingerly, his fingers touch the surface. Ripples extend outward from the contact, across Jack's features.

His fingertips break effortlessly through the surface, just like he's dipping his hand into a bowl of water, except sideways. He draws his wet fingers out and studies them, amazed. Touches one fingertip to his tongue.

O

"Seawater."

The pseudopod pulls back from him. It loops in the air dramatically, full circle... and ties itself into a knot. As the knot tightens down, it melts back into the body. The 'disappearing knot' trick.

Ianto laughs, grinning with the open wonder and delight of a child at a magic show. He is transported.

"Show off." Ianto laughs, then he looks at Jack. He grins broadly. He's with him now.

The stunned group watches as the thing moves on across the room. Out to the corridor.

Saxon and Schoenick enter the back way, through the dive-prep area. They see the pseudopod arching from the moonpool big as a tree trunk. Saxon's mind is blown. We can smell the insulation burning. He just stares.

The water tentacle enters and moves toward the hot-wired warhead. It studies the device for a few seconds. Jack and Ianto enter through a side door, in time to see the tentacle divide into four tendrils which wrap around the warhead. They begin to lift it off its cart.

Saxon finally jump-starts his brain. In a flash of insight, he runs to the big sliding door through which the pseudopod stretches into the corridor. He and Schoenick heave on the door. Like a guillotine blade it slices effortlessly through it.

The body of the pseudopod collapses, splashing on the floor. It reverts to nothing more than a long puddle of simple seawater. As the tendrils dissolve, the warhead slams back down onto the cart, unharmed. On Saxon's side of the door however, the "stump" rears back like a cobra. It withdraws rapidly into the moonpool. The glow fades away.

.

.

Sonny wakes up with a start as the HUM revs up into a LOUD WHINE and then fades away. He scrambles to track it.

Too late.


	8. showdown

Owen emerges from the can and looks down, puzzled, at the puddle running the length of the corridor. He missed the whole thing.

.

.

.

Mess Hall … Lights on. Everybody there. Ianto is really strutting, high on life, now that he's been proven right. "Okay, raise your hand if you think that was a Russian water-tentacle. Lieutenant? No? Well, a breakthrough."

Saxon is looking out from under his eyebrows like Nicholson in "The Shining".

Jack gives Ianto a warning look. Don't poke at the rattler. "You done impressing yourself, Tiger?"

"No way that could just be seawater." Toshiko is still in shock.

"They must've learned how to control water... I mean at a molecular level. They can plasticize it, polymerize it... whatever. Put it under intelligent control."

"Maybe their whole technology is based on that." Jack agrees "Controlling water."

Saxon is hunched over, elbows on his knees. His hands are out of sight. His arm is moving in a slow rhythm. We can't see what he's doing.

"That thing was probably their version of Big Geek... like an ROV." Owen points out.

"Just checking us out, huh?" John snorts "How come?"

Saxon has his K-BAR Knife under the table gripped white-knuckle in one hand. He is drawing it slowly and repeatedly across the skin of the other forearm. Neat chevrons of blood from wrist to elbow.

He doesn't flinch. His eyes are hard and bright as diamond drills. No one notices. He's keeping the edge.

"They're curious, maybe." Ianto surmises "We could be the first people they've seen up close."

"Hope they don't judge the whole race offa us." Sonny laughs.

"Maybe I oughta shave." John agrees.

Saxon stands abruptly, snags Schoenick with his eyes, and leaves, walking through the group as if they were smoke. This cold behaviour brings the mood down a notch.

Outside the mess hall, Saxon pauses, listening to the conversation resume. Bright speculation, a few jokes. Saxon is visible shaking. Breathing hard. Pupils dilated. Schoenick looks at him with concern.

"It went straight for the warhead." Saxon snarls "And they think it's cute."

"You need to get some sleep."

Saxon walks away without hearing him. Schoenick catches up.

The door opens in the dark room. Saxon enters, moving with purpose. He pulls his gear bag out from under the work table. Unzips it. Pulls out a short-barreled CAR-15 assault rifle. "We have no way of warning the surface. Do you know what that means?"

Schoenick doesn't know. He hopes Saxon knows. Because he's a fearless man who's discovering what it is to be afraid. Saxon inserts the magazine with a CLACK! Snaps the bolt. Tosses the rifle to Schoenick.

"It means... whatever happens is up to us."

.

.

.

Owen passes the maintenance room. Looks in. The warhead and its cart are missing. He looks around. Heads toward the sub-bay.

.

..

The discussion in the Mess Hall is still in progress.

"You think they're from down there originally?" Toshiko asks "Or from... you know".

She jerks her thumb toward the ceiling.

Ianto nods "I think they're from 'you know'. Some place that has similar conditions... cold, intense pressure. No light."

"Happy as hogs in a waller down there, prob'ly." John nods.

.

.

.

Owen freezes in the corridor as he hears a loud ratcheting sound echoing from the sub-bay. He edges forward slowly, trying to keep his feet silent on the steel floor. Slides up along the wall next to the door. Inches his eye around the doorframe. Across the room. Schoenick is working with a chainfall, lowering Big Geek onto the MIRV warhead, which is still on its cart. He begins to attach them together with a sling of tie-down straps.

Owen lets his breath out slowly. His expression is Holy Shit.

He slides back along the corridor wall, silently. Away from the door. Then turn turns quickly to go... WHAM! Saxon slams him up against the wall! .45 pressed to Owen's temple. Owen gulping air as Saxon ears back the hammer.

"Sniff something did you, rat boy?"

.

.

.

The meeting is breaking up as the door CLANGS open and Owen is thrust inside. His hands are taped behind his back and he stumbles onto his face. Saxon steps through smoothly, straight-arming the .45. Schoenick flanks him with the assault rifle aimed at the group.

"FREEZE! Don't move. That's it". Saxon barks then says to Monk "Here, hold this a second. We're going to phase three."

He hands his gun to Monk, with the assumption of absolute loyalty from a team member. Monk's eyes move between Saxon and the pistol. We can't tell what he's thinking. Saxon grabs Owen and shoves him onto a chair.

OWEN

"They're using Big Geek to take the bomb to the NTIs! We set it up to go right to them." Owen tells them.

Ianto looks stricken. His plan is betraying them all.

"Oh my God... Oh no..." Ianto gaps as he steps toward Saxon "Please, you can't. Saxon, think about what you're doing... for God's sake…"

Saxon lets him approach him, his eyes glittering. Without warning he grabs him by the hair and hurls him against the Coke machine, pinning him there with one hand.

Jack leaps forward.

"GET BACK!" Schoenick warns.

Jack freezes. The rifle's muzzle is aimed for a heart-shot.

Saxon moves up close to Ianto. "This is something I've wanted to do since I first met you."

His hand reaches down. We hear something RIP. His hand comes back up... holding a piece of gaffer's tape. He slaps it over Ianto's mouth. Then pushes him down into a chair.

Owen looks at Monk and Schoenick. "You boss is having a full-on meltdown. Guy's fixing to pull the pin on fifty kilotons and we're all ringside!"

"What's the timer set for?" Monk asks.

"Three hours." Schoenick answers.

"Shut up!"Saxon roars "Don't talk!"

"We can't get to minimum-safe-distance in three hours." Monk gapes "The shockwave will kill us. It'll crush this rig like a semi driving over a beer can."

Saxon screams "Shut up! SHUT UP! What's the matter with you?!"

Everybody is twitching a hyper. Schoenick is white-knuckling his assault rifle... looking from Monk to Saxon to the group.

"Just stay calm." Saxon snarls "The situation is under control."

Saxon backs out quickly with Schoenick.

Saxon dogs down the watertight door and wedges a piece of steel pipe into the mechanism so it can't be opened.

"Stay here."

Schoenick take a position in front of the door. Saxon turns and runs through the corridor like demons are chasing him.

Their only hope is to sway Schoenick. But the SEAL's fear is making him the perfect machine, totally dependent on external orders. And his orders are clear. They can see him through the tiny window in the door.

Ianto rips the tape painfully off his mouth. "Schoenick... your Lieutenant is about to make a real bad career move..."

"That guy's crazier'n a shithouse rat!" Owen snorts.

"We have to stop him!" Jack tells "Schoenick!"

They pound on the door. Schoenick turns and hangs his cap over the tiny window.

.

.

.

Using the chainfall, Saxon manoeuvres the completed Geek/MIRV package over the back of Flatbed, obviously preparing to use the submersible to take it out and launch it.

.

.

Ianto is up next to the door, with Jack.

"... he's about to declare war on an alien species, Schoenick, just when they're trying to make contact with us." Ianto is yelling through the door, then says to Jack "I think I'm reaching him."

There is a CLUNK-CLATTER and the door unlatches.

"See?"

The door opens. Jammer is standing there. Schoenick is in a heap against the far wall, moaning. Jammer hands the rifle to Owen as he walks in. Owen turns to cover the other SEAL.

Monk puts his hands up, passively. "I'm the least of your problems."

Jack appraises Jammer, who seems a little weak and dazed but basically okay. "Thanks. How you feeling, big guy?"

"Figured I was dead, there, when I seen that angel comin' toward me."

They all look at him for a second. What?

"Uh, okay, right." Jack says with confusion "You can tell us about it later. Let's go."

.

.

.

Jack drops down the ladder followed by the others. He tries the door into the main corridor. The wheel won't turn. The others get on it. Won't budge. "He's jammed the mechanism".

"Now what?" Ianto sighs.

They're locked in trimodule-C. No other doors give access to the sub-bay corridor. Jack's mind is racing. He drops down the ladder to Level One, into about two feet of water. He reaches down and open the emergency lockout hatch. Takes off his boots.

"Okay, I'm gonna free-swim to hatch six... get inside, get the door open from the other side." Jack tells everyone.

"Jack, that water's only a couple degrees above freezing." Ianto says in warning.

"Then I guess you better wish me luck, huh?"

John is pulling his boots off as well.

"Wish us luck" John amends, and then hands his wallet to Owen "'Case I don't die. Okay, Jack... let's go, podner, I ain't got all day."

Jack clasps him on the shoulder and starts hyperventilating. He drops into the water.

Jack shoots down through the hatch. The cold hits him list a fist, becoming instantly paralyzing. He starts kicking in powerful strokes through the dark water, manoeuvring around tangles of umbilical cable twisted tubular steel.

John is behind him, swimming like hell. They reach hatch six. Together they spin the wheel and heave upward, opening it.

Jack surges up into the lock. John jams into the tiny airspace with him. They try the upper hatch. Jammed. They're both panting with the exertion

and intense cold.

"Hafta... go on to... the moonpool. Only way." Jack gasps out.

"I can't... make it... partner."

Jack looks at John, shivering and heaving, wide-eyed. "Okay, Fish. You head back."

Jack hyperventilates rapidly and pikes over diving back out through the hatch.

Jack is stroking rapidly through the tangle of pipes and conduit. He sees the lit rectangle of the moonpool far ahead.

In the moonpool, Jack surface with an explosive gasp beside the full of Flatbed. His wracked breathing is masked by the WHINE of HYDRAULICS as Saxon uses the external controls to extend Flatbed's big hydraulic arm, locking the Geek/MIRV in its gripper.

Jack strokes to a point where Saxon can't see him and heaves up out of the water onto the deck of the pool. He lies gasping behind Cab One's cradle.

His limbs are wooden and unresponsive from the cold. His fingers are completely numb. He hugs himself, putting his hands under his armpits.

Scans the situation. He can't get to the door, which is across the room, without Saxon seeing him.

.

.

.

Ianto watching the whole thing going down, ON THE SCREEN, a high angle of the sub bay... Jack is moving up on Saxon.

"He can't get to the door..." Owen mutters "I think he's going to try and take him himself."

"He couldn't be that dumb. The guy's a trained killer. Jack's idea of a fight is arm-wrestling Toshiko over laundry duty." Ianto sighs.

Jack picks up a piece of pipe. Hefts it. Moves forward, crouched... stalking. Ianto yells at the screen in frustration.

.

.

.

Jack chucks a tool across the chamber, creating a clattering distraction, then wades in with the pipe in a vicious swing to the back of Saxon's knees, taking him down. Saxon spins even as he falls, catching Jack in a scissor kick that topples him.

Grappling, they fall together into the freezing water.

Saxon is momentarily stunned by the cold, giving Jack time to haul himself out, hoping to make it to the door.

Saxon launches from the water and grabs him legs.

He pulls himself up as Jack kick out. Claws his way viciously over Jack's body until he has him pinned to the deck. Then he pulls out the .45. Puts it unceremoniously to Jack's forehead.

.

.

.

"NOOO!" Ianto screams.

.

.

.

Saxon pulls the trigger... CLICK. Jack flinches, then opens his eyes, staring cross-eyed at the muzzle of the .45. Saxon cocks it and tries again. CLICK. Nothing. Really pissed off beyond description, Jack hurls the commando off him with a powerful heave, sending him clattering against a rack of equipment. They face off, panting.

.

..

The rig crew turns from the screen at the sound of Monk's voice.

"I took the liberty of removing this before I gave it back to him." Monk pulls his hand out from under his blanket and holds up the magazine from the .45."

.

.

.

Even so Jack is getting his ass kicked. Saxon's really trying to put him out of business. It's mostly duck and dodges on Jack's part. Throw a few things. When Saxon connects, Jack goes down hard. Give him credit, though. He manages to scramble back up.

The fight wrecks the room, scattering tools and gear.

Compressed air cylinders roll dangerously around the floor.

Saxon slips on one and Jacks get in a couple of good licks.

Slams the SEAL's head in an equipment locker door.

But the Navy man is just too massive. Jack is hammered back into a wall. Saxon has his fist cocked back for the coup de grace. Spins around at the sound of a voice.

"Hey!"

John is right behind him. Dripping wet. A trail of water goes back to the moonpool a few feet away.

CRACK! John's 'Hammer' punch comes in so hard and so fast, Saxon is knocked right on his ass. He doesn't get up. Just sort of flops around.

John helps Jack to his feet. They advance on Saxon, who crab-scuttles sideways, his eyes rabid.

He picks up a helium tank and hurls it at them. As they duck he sprints to Flatbed and drops through the hatch and slams it down.

Jack yells to John "Get the door!"

Jack leaps across the water to land on Flatbed. The hatch is already sealed.

He grapples with Geek/MIRV, trying to free it from the steel claw.

Saxon crawls along the access tunnel to the pilot's compartment. He claws his way into the control seat and starts rapidly flipping switches.

.

.

.

John pounds down the corridor like he's never run before, his gut doing a rumba. He reaches the door, tears out the piece of pipe and spins the wheel. Owen pushes it open so fast it hits John in the stomach. Owen tears past him, running with the assault rifle. John Wayne.

.

.

.

Flatbed is submerging, with only the hatch tower still above the water. Jack is being dragged down, still trying to free the ROV. He gives up when he sees Owen run in, waving the assault rifle around like a 130-pound Rambo.

Jack climbs the hatch tower and leaps to the deck of the moonpool.

Owen clumsily raises the unfamiliar rifle at Saxon, visible inside his viewing bubble beneath the swirling water. Saxon looks up, stares at the gun... doesn't seem to care.

"SHOOT!" John yells.

Owen's squeezing the trigger and nothing's happening. Flatbed's hatch tower goes under.

"Safety's on!" John us yelling "On the side... the lever! Up, push it up!"

Owen fumble with the selective-fire lever, BLAM-BLAM-BLAM! He put three quick rounds into the ceiling.

"SHIT!"

"Give me that!" John grabs it out of Owen's hands and aims it at the sub. He racks the water with a long burst. The rounds nip nasty contrails through the water. They barely scar the front port.

"Forget that... go for Big Geek!" Ianto yells, running too.

John rakes the descending sub with more bursts, trying to hit the

shimmering shape of the ROV on its back. The rounds are arcing wild, a few hitting the ROV but causing little damage.

Saxon completes his descent to just above the seafloor. John empties the weapon.

"Gimme a hand!"

They all turn. Jack is fumbling into his wetsuit like a madman. The others rush over to help him.

"Get the rest of my gear. Grab that hat there...let's go guys! Come on, come on!"

John slams a backpack onto Jack's shoulders, grappling with the straps and hose connections. Owen and Sonny (with one hand) are clipping, zipping and buckling all over him. This is a world-record suit-up time. Jack pulls the rubber neck-dam of the helmet's lower ring down over his face.

"Helmet... helmet! Work fast."

Beneath the habitat, Saxon is maneuvering Flatbed through the twisted pipe and debris left by Torchwood's slide to the edge. Bloodied, his fatigues ripped half-off, he looks like a feral animal. His eyes burn with the determination of his mission.

.

.

.

Jammer expertly works the crane controls, moving Cab One out over the moonpool from its drydock cradle. Ianto and Toshiko are scrambling like monkeys over the port side crash bars of the swinging sub, clambering up to the hatch tower.

"I'll unhook." Toshiko yells.

"Ianto hesitates then Toshiko shouts "GO! You're better in these than I am."

Ianto recognizes this for what it is... a sign of respect, a reconciliation. He nods and drops through the hatch.

.

.

.

Saxon passes under the twisted wreckage of the big automated derrick and makes a tight turn beneath the drill-floor module. Flatbed scrapes through between twisted conduit, metal screeching on metal.

.

.

.

Jack has his 'hat' locked down and his air cut on. He take two quick strides to the edge of the pool and just drops in.

Jack rockets down in a column of bubbles. He looks around. Through the lattice of conduit under the rig he can see Flatbed moving forward from its exit point under the stern. Jack sees a shortcut under the platform.

He kicks along a lattice a pipes, heaving himself along in frantic hand-over- hand stokes. He reaches for Flatbed's stern as it passes.

Misses the last hand-hold... but just manages to seize a tie-down trailing behind it. He is jerked along behind the sub.

Jack holds on with both hands as he is buffeted in the wake of the powerful thrusters. Flatbed gathers speed, moving out toward the edge of the abyssal wall. The current slams him, spinning him like a fishing lure. He pulls himself forward slowly until he can grip the stern rail of Flatbed's platform.

Flatbed appears over the edge and stops.

Hovering.

Jack has the break he needs. He scrambles up onto the deck and opens and equipment locker. Nothing in it but one of the yellow nylon safety lines. The big arm begins to unfold, lifting Geek/ROV.

Saxon works intently. His eyes are the cool ice of lethal madness in a face streaked with blood. He brings the ROV into view with the boom arm.

GEEK/ROV had a passenger. Harkness. The diver is holding Geek's skid with one hand, doing something with the other. He turns to look at Saxon.

Saxon releases the ROV with the gripper and makes a grab at Jack with the steel claw. Jack dives. The gripper hits his helmet a glancing blow. Jack kicks away rapidly, letting nylon rope pay out. He has managed to tie one end to Geek's skids. Saxon hits the button to activate the ROV, sending an acoustic pulse to Geek's transponder. The little robot, pregnant with its load of death, turns nimbly around and dives out and down toward the void.

Saxon pivots his machine toward Jack. Jack strokes rapidly to a large jumble of wreckage. He loops the rope around a twisted pipe. Big Geek is hauling ass away from him. The line snap taut an instant later. The ROV strains, like a Rottweiler on a leash... trying to go. The rope is slipping as Jack fights to make a knot.

Flatbed slews around, thrusters whining. As it banks, it hurls up clouds of sediment from the escarpment face.

Through the front panel we see Saxon jerking on the controls.

The big arm extends menacingly. The smaller from manipulators open. An enormous predatory instinct, its lights blaring.

The big machine roars forward. Straight at Jack.

Jack gets his knot partly done. See Flatbed looming.

Glare-lit in its lights, Jack grabs a handle hold and pulls himself downward as Saxon closes the last few feet.

One manipulator slams into his backpack, tumbling him, and the sub's underside rakes across his legs as it passes over. Flatbed crushes into the tangle of pipework.

K-CRUUUNCH!

Saxon is slammed hard over the controls, up into the front dome port. He gets back in the seat. Strains to free his machine.

.

.

.

Jack swims clear, diving down at an angle along the wall, hoping to stay in Saxon's blind area. Flatbed backs out of the wreckage in a cloud of debris.

It pivots toward Jack.

Moves after him.


	9. into the blackness of the true void

The ROV is whining mindlessly, trying to please. Trying to GO.

Jack's knot begins to slip. The nylon line starts to play through the knot slowly.

Jack has got himself into a bad position. Along the bare rock face of the cliff wall he is naked, nailed in the spotlights like a rabbit in front of a truck. Saxon puts the hammer down, thrust levers all the way forward.

Flatbed surges forward, multi-limbed and demonic. There's no cover, side to side, up or down.

Saxon has him dead in his sights. Suddenly a bright glare blasts in, blinding Saxon. He looks up to see Cab One rushing down upon him, full throttle.

At the last moment Ianto slams the thrusters full-lock and the submersible slews sideways, slamming its heavy skidplate into Flatbed's cab. Saxon is smashed sideways by the shock. He fights to control his vehicle.

Ianto looks up to see Saxon's sub gun it up over the wall, out of sight. He cruises up over Jack. "Get in!"

Jack gets the lockout hatch open and clambers up into Cab One's belly.

Jack flops over the lip of the hatch and slams it shut. He ditches his helmet. Ianto raises his vehicle warily above the wall. Through the front port there is not sign of Saxon.

"You owe me one, Jax."

"Can we negotiate later? There's Big Geek." He points. Through the front port, they can see the ROV still straining at its leash. Ianto dives toward it, simultaneously working the controls to open his own small manipulator claws.

The last few feet of the rope slip through the knot.

Big Geek happily surges forward. It dives gracefully down into the void, trailing the yellow rope like a kite tail.

"Go after it! We gotta catch it!" Jack yells with alarm.

Flatbed drops behind them, dwarfing little Cab One. They are slammed viciously as Saxon's submersible hammers into them. Ianto hits full throttle. Saxon floors it after Ianto, ramming him from behind with his more powerful vehicle. With difficulty Ianto maintains trim.

He arcs back toward the rig. Flatbed slams him again, from the side. He fights for control.

Jack is tossed around, ricocheting off the walls. Ianto flies with his jaw set. Fighting hard for control. The A-frame of the rig looms before him.

He shoots through at full throttle.

Now the fight is really on. The two subs are dodging between the cylindrical modules at full throttle, slamming into each other and the steel pressure hulls.

Saxon sideswipes the smaller sub, jamming it sideways. It screeches along the flank of one of the trimodules.

They head out over empty terrain in a flat-out speed run.

Ianto is jinking and dodging as Flatbed, roars along behind him, tearing up the bottom with its powerful backwash. Ianto carves hard around a rock pinnacle, finding himself running parallel to the edge of the abyssal canyon.

Saxon is ramming, hammering from behind, then from side to side.

Ianto snarls. He's pissing him off. He shouldn't do that.

Ahead, out of the blackness, another outcropping.

Ianto rises, cuts right.

Smashes down into Saxon's craft. Timing it just right. He skids and catches in the rocks. Flatbed slews violently, nosing down. Crushing into the rocky bottom.

Pressing the advantage, Ianto hammers into Flatbed from behind.

It smashes full force into a second spire, spinning out of control.

Tangles together, the subs slide down an embankment toward the edge of the wall. With his one remaining thruster Ianto jerks clear of Flatbed and grounds his crippled sub. Flatbed tumbles over the edge.

The wall falls, trailing a cloud of sediment like a comet's tail, down into the unfathomable blackness below.

Inside the machine, Saxon is fighting for control. He has no buoyancy or motors and the craft continues its mad plunge. As the pressure intensifies the hull begins to groan, and steel fitting scream with the enormous load.

A tiny silver fracture shoots partway across the front bubble. Grows. Saxon gives up fighting. Just stares, wide eyed, at his death. A damned soul dropping into the bottomless pit.

The fracture line arcs rapidly across the dome port.

Suddenly, a scythe-like curtain of seawater, under tons of pressure, slashes into him. A moment later the bubble implodes, and Saxon disappears in a bloody froth of churning water, air and glass shards.

Flatbed looks like a toy, tumbling away down the wall.

Soon its lights vanish.

.

.

.

They're both going to have a lot of bruises...Ianto is surveying the damage. Water is spraying down on them like a shower, and lights are flickering.

"You did okay, back there." Ianto says "I was fairly impressed."

"Not good enough." Jack replies "We still gotta catch Big Geek."

"Not in this thing." Ianto is flipping switches. Nothing works.

"You totaled it, huh?"

"Yeah. So sue me" Ianto snorts.

Jack looks down. There's already about a foot of water sloshing around the floor at their feet. "It's flooding like a son of the bitch."

"You noticed." Ianto picks up and hand-mike of the underwater telephone. "Torchwood, Torchwood, this is Cab One, over."

He waits. No response.

"Try again." Jack prompts.

"Torchwood, this is Cab One. We need assistance, over. Torchwood, this…" With a SEARING CRACKLE or arc-light, a power panel shorts out and everything goes black. "Well, that's that."

"Wonderful."Jack sighs looking around "There's some light from somewhere..."

A faint illumination, dimmer than moonlight, washes in through the front port. Ianto scrunches up against the acrylic and scans the darkness.

"Over there. It's the rig." Ianto points.

A glow, beyond a rock promontory... like the lights of a town just over the hill in the desert.

"Good hundred yards, I'd say."Jack agrees.

"They'll come out after us." Ianto says confidently.

"Yeah, but it's gonna take them a while to find us. We better get this flooding stopped." Jack agrees. He picks up his helmet and clicks on the light. Using the thing like a bulky flashlight. The water is really pouring in, spraying them like a shower...almost two feet deep already.

"You see where it's coming in?" Ianto asks.

"Somewhere behind this panel." Jack mutters "Hold this."

Ianto takes the light and Jack tries to reach the burst weld, which is blocked by a steel switch panel and a bunch of conduit.

"Can't get to it. Have to pull this panel off." Jack pants "You go any tools?"

"I don't know, look around."

Jack scans the cramped interior, feels around under the water. It's past his knees.

"Nothing. Son of a bitch. All I need's a goddamn crescent wrench." Jack grumbles. He grabs the panel in both hands and starts torquing on it, trying to wrench it off the wall. Heaves on it repeatedly. Finally stops, panting. He's breathing hard now, and it's not just effort.

"Son of a bitch!"

"Calm down, Jack." Ianto begs, A nervous edge in his voice now. Jack's turning all around, looking around for anything, trying to think fast. Water up to their waists. The sea closing in.

"Okay... okay. We gotta get you out of here." Jack looks around frantically.

"How?"

"I don't know how!" Jack yells.

"We've only got one suit." Ianto points out.

"I know! I know! But we better come up with something." Jack says, his teeth chattering.

"Aaargh! I'm freezing!" Ianto climbs up on the pilots seat, scrunching right up against the ceiling, keeping as much of himself as possible out of the frigid water. He's shaking all over with the cold, and getting drenched from above by water pouring in. "Okay, look, you swim to the rig and come back with another suit."

"Seven, eight minute swim each way... not enough time. Look at this..." jack motions at the rate of flooding "Time I get back you'll be…"

That stops the conversation for a second. About two feet of airspace left. Jack can't believe what this is coming down to. They both stare at each other for a long moment.

Jack makes a decision. Starts pulling off his backpack. "Alright, put this on."

"What, you growing gills all of a sudden?" Ianto scoffs "You got it on, keep it on."

"Don't argue, goddamnit, just…"

"No way! Forget it. Not an option." Ianto slides from the seat to wrestle with him.

Jack has his pack off uncoupling it. Ianto keeps fighting his hands, stopping him, hooking it back up. The desperation of the situation fuels the struggle.

"Ianto, just put the thing on and shut up…"

"NO! Now be logical, Jack, you're…"

"FUCK LOGIC!"

They're both right up against the ceiling, water up to their chests.

Ianto's lips are blue and trembling from the cold. "Listen... will you listen to me for a second!? You're for the suit on and you're a better swimmer than me. Right? So I got a plan..."

"What's the plan?"

"I drown, you tow me back to the rig…"

"WHAT KIND OF PLAN IS THAT!?" Jack screams.

Ianto's gut-scared... shaking violently, his eyes wide. But he's keeping it together. Thinking it out. Jack see the bottomless pit opening to take him and he can barely think.

"Look, this water is only a couple degrees above freezing. I drown." Ianto says like it does not even matter "I go into deep hypothermia...my blood like ice water. I can maybe be revived after ten, fifteen minutes. You got all the stuff to do it on the rig."

Jack stops moving and looks into his face, inches from him. The water is up to their necks. He knows that, as always, infuriatingly, Ianto is right.

"It is insane."

"It's the only way, Jack. Now trust me."

Ianto takes a deep breath. Before his nerve fails he busies his hands on Jack's suit, rehooking everything.

"Jesus, I don't believe this is happening." Jack is trying not to sob as he looks at the only man he has ever loved like this.

Ianto raise his helmet. Water up to their chins. They lock eyes, inches apart. He can feel Ianto's breath on his face... maybe for the last time.

"Oh God, Yan... I…"

"Tell me later."

Jack grabs Ianto's head in both hands and pulls his mouth to his. They lock together in a fierce kiss, fueled by passion and terror... the naked realization of love hanging over the abyss of death.

Ianto breaks away at the last possible second and quickly pulls his helmet over his head. Seats is down over the neck ring. Lock the bail-out handle, sealing it. Even with his head pressing up into the highest point of the ceiling, Ianto's mouth is barely above water.

He gives a scared little laugh. "This is maybe not such a great plan, is it?"

He is half-paralyzed with the cold, shaking pathetically. Puts his face to the glass of his helmet. Seconds to go.

"Hold me. Hold me, Jack... I'm so scared..."

Jack can't hear him, but he read his lips. They clutch each other desperately. The embrace last while the water rises over her mouth and nose. Ianto starts to choke. His hands grip Jack's shoulders like claws. He bucks and thrashes.

The freezing seawater races into his lungs. His finger go slack, and his hands float lifelessly.

Jack holds him, and a scream tears loose from him, a pure agony of the soul.

"NOOOOO!"

Jack stares, transfixed, as the last tiny bubble trickles out of Ianto's open mouth. He kicks himself into gear, fingers frenzied as he spins the wheel of the lockout hatch.

.

.

.

TIGHT ON VIDEO SCREEN, one of the outside cameras. A ghostly figure swims out of the darkness, towing something. Toshiko notices "It's Jack. Oh my God... that's Ianto!"

"Torchwood, Torchwood, do you read?" Jack's voice is starting to faintly come over the speakers.

"Read you, Jack. We're here" Owen shouts as he leaps from his chair.

Jack swims with long, powerful kicks, towing Ianto. Ianto's arms and legs float as gracefully as seaweed waving in a gentle current. Jack's voice comes in short rasps, breathing hard, but icy with control. "Go to the infirmary... get the cart .. oxygen...de-fib kit... adrenaline in a... ten cc syringe... and some... heating blankets. You got all that?"

"Got it. Over." Owen barks.

"Meet me in the moonpool. Move fast"

.

.

.

The door crashes open and Jammer thunders in. He picks up the CPR cart, meant to roll on wheels, and carries it out past Owen, John, and Toshiko, who are crowding in to get the rest of the equipment. They ransack the place in about ten seconds, grabbing everything they might need and half of everythingelse.

Jack moves up toward the rectangle of light, towing Ianto to the diving platform. Through the surface we can see the others arrive at the edge, looking down.

Owen and John are setting up the cart and the oxygen kit, dropping things, making mistakes. Toshiko is teaching herself how to fill a syringe from a bottle of adrenaline.

"Here he comes!" Sonny shouts a warning.

Jammer and Sonny leap into the freezing water, waist deep on the submerged diving platform. Jack bursts to the surface. Together they haul Ianto across the platform, out of the water, and onto the deck. His skin is blue-white, his chest still.

Jack rips his helmet off in a near-frenzy, like a man possessed, a man with a mission. The others are galvanized by his energy even though they all see Ianto as dead, a corpse... cold and inert. Water flows from his mouth and nose and his lips are blue, his limbs completely limp. Owen peels back one eyelid, to find the pupil fixed and dilated.

But when Jack shouts for them to move, they move.

"Turn him over!"

They flip his husband's body over. He straddles him, pushing down with both hands in the middle of his back. Seawater gushes from his slack lips. He does it again until the flow stops, then flips him onto his back.

"Come on, hurry! Gimme the de-fib..."

Toshiko and John are fumbling with the emergency cart equipment. They've all been trained in CPR and use of the gear but that was years ago, and is a friend they're working on. They're all thumbs.

John drops the electrodes, picks them up quickly, hands them to Jack... "Here, here, here... no, you got to have bare skin, or it won't..."

Jack rips into his clothing, opening his jumpsuit, literally tearing away his T-shirt, revealing his bare chest... bony and still. "Jesus. Gimme those, come on. John, move it, man! Come on... come on!"

He slaps the things into Ianto's bare skin, one on the sternum and one on the side of the rib cage.

"Is that it? Is this right?"

"Yeah! I mean, I don't know... it looks right." Owen nods.

"All right. Do it!"

Toshiko hits the switch and Ianto's body convulses. It is a pure muscle reflex, and when it is over, there is not a hint of life. Owen pushes Jack back and puts a black rubber oxygen mask over Ianto's mouth. He opens the valve on the cylinder and starts pumping the squeeze bag. They start packing electronic blankets around him to fight the intense hypothermia

"Do it again, Toshiko. Zap him again!"

The current hits Ianto again and his back arches. Jack doesn't wait for a result... he's in his own reality now, driven. He's doing it all at once, somehow, in a senseless frenzy... pumping on his chest with his hands, squeezing the oxygen bag, placing the electrodes.

"Aw. Christ... come on, baby. Again! Do it again!"

Ianto's back arches. His body relaxes, inert.

"Come on, Toshiko... what are you waiting for?"

A hush seems to have fallen over the group. They know instinctively that it's over. But Jack can't accept it. He looks at them, beseechingly, like they are somehow intentionally holding out on him. Toshiko starts to cry, quietly.

"Jack, it's over, man. It's over." John says gently.


	10. gotta be the hero

There is a beat of silence. Jack stares down into Ianto's half-open, motionless eyes.

John puts his hand gently on Jack's shoulder.

Suddenly Jack tears John's hand away and sets upon Ianto like a madman, renewing his efforts in spades... totally manic.

"No! NO! He's not... his heart is strong, he wants to live... can't you see that? Come on, Yan. Come on, baby! Zap him again! Do it... DO IT!"

They do. And Jack works, feverishly. He locks his lips over Ianto's and starts mouth-to-mouth. It is frantic, passionate... the kiss of life.

"Come on, breath! Goddamn it, you bastard, you never backed down from anything in life... now fight!"

He slaps Ianto's face, hard. His head lolls. He smacks him the other way. "Fight, Goddamnit!"

From the bottom of the great well we can see a light that rockets toward us in the blackness, as we soar upward from the pit. We see Jack yelling, but his voice is distant, windlike.

"FIGHT!" Jack screams, his voice breaking.

Then something incredible happens. Something they will never forget as long as they live. Ianto coughs once, weakly, and his hands clench in a spasm.

Jack sees it and his expression becomes beatific. "Come on, Yan. You can do it... fight your way back, baby..."

The others look on in wonder as Jack wills this man back.

Ianto starts to cough, weakly at first... then more violently as he draws air into his lungs. Jack crouches over him, rubbing his limbs... trying to re-establish circulation. It is like a difficult birth. Ianto comes hacking and howling back into the world, wet and naked and fighting for breath.

Jack puts the oxygen mask over his face and he draws breath after agonized breath. He pushes his wet hair back from his face with his trembling hands, and watches him breathe. Colour is returning to her skin as he lies there, gasping weakly.

John, Owen, Toshiko, Jammer, the others... they're all grinning, crying, beaming... gazing at the miracle of his rebirth.

Tears are streaming down his face Jack says in a whisper, fierce and harsh "You did it, Tiger."

.

…

.

.

Later Ianto is sleeping peacefully. Jack is hovering over him, attentive. They are alone in Jack's tiny cubicle. Perhaps twenty minutes have passed. Ianto is completely swaddles in blankets, except for his face, and looks like a waif.

Ianto's eyes flutter and open. The first thing he sees is Jack, bending over him. Jack can't help himself. The tears break again and roll down his cheeks. Ianto seems terribly fragile, but bright and aware. He smiles, faintly... touches Jack's cheek. "Hey... big boys don't cry, remember?"

"Hi, Tiger."

"Hi, tough guy. I guess it worked, huh?"

"Course is worked. You're never wrong, are you?" Jack said like it was an accusation then he smiled softly "How d'you feel."

"I've been better. Next time it's your turn, okay?"

Jack's expression turns inexplicably grim. "Well, you got that right."

.

.

.

Monk's fingers insert acrylic scleral lenses under Jack's eyelids so he can see in the fluid helmet.

Jack is wearing the SEALs' deep suit. Everybody is grouped around, buckling and zipping. He is hyperventilating with an oxygen mask, part of the procedure for transitioning from air to fluid breathing. Monk, on his stretcher, is presiding. The resident expert. Ianto is wrapped in a blanket, still looking wan and frail. He doesn't have the strength to resist Jack's will, but he's trying.

"No, Jack, no... not you."

"Who then?" Jack replies without looking at him.

Ianto looks around at the others. Sees their eyes. The fear. Has his answer.

Jack lowers the helmet over his head. John clamps it down. We see what's driving him... his sense of responsibility for these people, for not being able to prevent this situation.

He touches Ianto's cheek, one last time. Ianto sees his fingers are trembling. Then he puts on the gloves. John is strapping a KEYPAD UNIT onto Jack's forearm. Ianto wants to scream... to stop this madness.

"So I'll hear you, but I can't talk?" Jack asks.

"The fluid prevents your larynx from making sound. It'll feel a little strange." Owen says.

"Warning you now, folks, I'm a lousy typist." Jack says, then a beat "The moment of truth, huh?"

His breathing is shallow and tense. He looks at Ianto. The eyes of a condemned man. Ianto squeezes his hand. He takes a deep breath.

"Okay. Let's rock and roll."

Monk gently cracks a valve on the suit's feed line. The breathing fluid (3M fluorocarbon emulsion FX-80) swirls into the helmet. Jack reflexively raises his chin. The liquid fills toward his mouth.

Monk instructs gently "Relax now, Jack. Just keep breathing as it fills... don't fight it. Take it in. Just let yourself take it in."

Suddenly, there's nothing in there to breathe but liquid. His eyes go wide, instant panic. He starts to thrash. Chest heaving.

"Hold him." Monk yells "Hold him. This is normal... it'll pass in a second. You're gonna be okay. We all breathe liquid for nine months, Jack. Your body will remember."

Ianto grabs Jack's shoulders, steadying him. He finds his eyes, the look calming him. He's passed into a realm from which he has already returned.

His spasms subside. He begins to "breathe" normally. He gets a goofy look of wonder on his face, not really believing what he's experiencing. He is alive, alert and quite completely drowned inside the FBS helmet. He grins.

Gives a big thumbs up.

Ianto picks up a microphone. "Can you hear me okay? (another thumbs up) Try your keypad."

Jack taps out a brief message. FEELS WEIRD - YOU SHOULD TRY THIS prints out on their portable monitor.

"I already have, Twpsyn." Ianto smiles.

They help Jack to the edge of the dive platform. Jammer and Owen lower Little Geek into the water and Jack grabs onto it. Owen yells right up next to his helmet. "I redid Little Geek's chip the same as Big Geek! He should take you right to it. All you gotta Ianto crouches at the edge to watch Jack submerge."

Jack looks up at him as he drops away.

In a few seconds, Ianto can't see him. His chin quivers, minutely.

From far below, Torchwood is a faint tiara of lights, above in the blackness. A single moving light appears above, at the edge of the cliff, and starts down. It grows large, resolving into Jack, free-falling down the wall.

He gathers speed as Little Geek's vertical thrusters drives them down.

Jack looks down. Between his feet he can see a short way down the wall in the glow of his single light, and beyond that an unfathomable blackness. The wall unrolls upwards out of the darkness like a convoluted gray drapery. He looks up. The lights of Torchwood are gone. He feels more alone than he has ever felt.

He types out: CANT SEE YOU

Ianto's voice comes through with those velvety vowels "We're right here with you, Jack. Your depth is 3800 feet. You're doing fine."

Jack comes upon the twisted wreckage of the crane, hanging against the wall like a forty-ton yo-yo at the end of the umbilical.

.

.

Everyone is grouped around the monitor screen, watching Jack's telemetry. Jack types out: GOOD DEAL ON SLIGHTLY USED CRANE. They watch the depth meter counting down.

"4800 feet. It's official." Monk says softly.

"Jack, according to Monk here, you just set a record for the deepest suit dive. Bet you didn't think you'd be doing this when you got up this morning." Ianto tries for levity.

The screen print out: CALL GUINESS.

They laugh.

So far so good.

Seconds

Later Owen says "One mile down and still grinnin'."

.

.

Jack is a tiny spider dropping down the wall in a pathetic little pool of light. The wall is sterile brown-gray, devoid of life at this depth. Looking down, as the light shrinks to a star and vanishes in the blackness yawning below.

.

.

Ianto has the microphone gripped tightly, and the lightness in his voice is a bit brittle. "8500 feet, Jack. Everything okay?"

"Ask him a pressure effects." Monk prompts him "Tremors, vision problems, euphoria."

"Ensign Monk wants to know how you feel." Ianto repeats to Jack.

COLD.

"Big baby" Ianto croons.

HANDS SHAKING. HHARD TO TYPE.

"It's starting." Monk says softly "It hits the nervous system first."

"Keep talking, Ianto." Toshiko glares at Monk "Just let him hear your voice. It doesn't matter what about."

"Don't forget Jack, you're being graded on spelling as well as sentence structure, so concentrate, okay?" Ianto kids, then takes a long pause "Jack, I... uh, there's some things I want to say. It's hard for me. I'm not of those softy, gooey-centre-type people. It's not easy, you know, being a cast-iron prick. It takes discipline and years of training. A lot of people don't appreciate that."

Ianto has somehow tuned out the others in the room. In his mind he is with Jack, out in the darkness. But it wasn't all bad. I know that. You remember that bike trip... we rode the Harley up through Oregon? It took me a week to get the bugs out of my teeth, but I've never been happier. It was the most... free... I've ever felt. I'm sorry I can't tell you these things to your face."

.

.

Jack is visibly trembling, gritting his teeth... holding on as the vice-grip of pressure takes him.

He listens to Ianto's voice "It's pitiful. I have to wait until you're freezing in the dark and there's ten thousand feet of water between us. I guess I'm babbling. I'm sorry."

Jack struggles with his keyboard.

YOU ALWAYS DID TALK TOO MUCH

.

.

Somehow Ianto's smiling and on the verge of tears at the same time.

"Two miles down and still grinnin'" Owen crows "Comin' up on the big ten thou'."

"Bottom's still a mile and a half down." Tosho warns.

.

.

.

BLAM!

Jack jerks as his dive light implodes. He still has Geek's floodlights.

He falls on.

.

.

"12000 feet. Jesus, I don't believe he's doing this."

"Shut up, Owen. Jack, how you doing?" Ianto slaps at the idiot.

SE LUMINUS THINNGS

Everyone snaps suddenly alert.

"Uh, oh..." Owen says softly.

"What kind of luminous things, Jack?" Ianto asks.

"Maybe it's... you know... them." John suggests.

ITS OK. SQUID. GLOWING SQUID.

.

.

.

Jack is in an enormous school of bioluminescent squid, graceful, attenuated creatures less than a foot long. Thousands of then glide in ghostly arcs around him, filling the black void as far as the eye can see. He stares at them in wonder. Reaches out and touches one, catches it, lets it go. Are they really here? He can no longer be sure of his own perceptions.

.

.

.

Another message from Jack: THINK THEYR REAL.

"He's losing it. Talk to him. Keep him with us." Monk tells Ianto.

"Jack, it's the pressure. Try to concentrate." Ianto croons "Concentrate on my voice. Just listen to my voice."

.

.

.

Jack emerges from the school of squid. As he falls, they form a luminous plane of swirling colours above him. He stares upwards, transfixed at the ghostly blizzard of luminescence above him. A spectral form takes shape in the patternless glow... resolving into Ianto's face, a hundred feet wide.

Gazing down at him, his expression sad. His image receded away from him into the darkness above as he falls.

Jack reaches up in anguish.

.

.

.

Ianto watches as Jack haltingly types out:

YOUR GOING AWAY

"I'm not going away, Jack. I'm right here, right here with you. This is Ianto, Jack. I'm right here."

"Signal's fading" Toshiko sighs.

"We're losing juice... kill everything we don't need." Owen suddenly says "John, knock out those lights."

Everyone hustles to comply. The room is plunged into darkness, the faces of the group lit only by the ghostly CRT screen.

Toshiko tells them as her fingers move across her own keyboard "Run it through the digital processor, cook it as much as you can."

John checks the gauges and shakes his head. With wonder

"Seventeen thousand feet. Good Christ Almighty, this is insane."

.

.

.

Jack is shaking violently, as if with palsy. His eyes keep rolling back, and he's having a hard time staying conscious. He tries to type a message and he can't. The tons of pressure per square inch are short-circuiting his nervous system. Suddenly K-BAM! Little Geek's pressure hull implodes. Its lights go out.

BLACKNESS.

.

..

.

"Little Geek just folded." Toshiko whispers.

"Bye, little buddy." Owen shows dismay at the loss of one of his favourite toys.

"He can still make it." Monk says firmly.

"I know how alone you feel... alone in all that cold blackness... but I'm there in the dark with you, Jack you're not alone..." Ianto seems not to be in the room, but to be with him, seeing what he sees. He is oblivious to the others.

.

..

Blackness.

Then a bright light appears... he's lit a MAGNESIUM FLARE.

It's fierce, flickering glare lights his plunge. Jack discards the stalwart little ROV and free-falls like a skydiver without a chute. Out of control, he hits a ledge and rolls off. Tumbles forward in a cloud of debris. He hits another outcropping, limp as a rag doll. Rocks and sand rain down with him as he continues his descent.

Jack is quivering, teeth locked in a titanic rigor.

He pulls his arms and legs slowly into a foetal position.

In the plunge toward death he has gone he has gone full circle, returned to the womb in which we all breathe the water of life before we know the world of air and light. Still, there is Ianto's voice, faintly in his helmet.

"You remember that time, you were pretty drunk, you probably don't remember... the power went out at the old apartment, the one on Orange Street... and we were staring at that one little candle, and I said something really dumb like that candle is me, like every one of us is out there alone in the dark in this life..."

.

.

.

Ianto grips the microphone. His voice has become a hoarse

whisper. His eyes are intense, focused on a point far beyond the walls of the room.

"... and you lit another candle and put it beside mine and said "that's me"... and we stared at the two candles, and then we... well, if you remember any of it, I'm sure you remember the next part. Jack, there are two candles in the dark. I'm with you. I'll always be with you."

.

.

A tiny flickering light moves down along a vast black wall. Jack falls on in dream-like solitude, a candle in the dark.

.

.

.

John gently takes the microphone from Ianto's hands and leans close. "How you doin', partner? Still with us, come-back? Talk to us, Jacky boy."

They watch the screen, expectantly.

Nothing. Owen and Toshiko start checking the equipment. Ianto tries unsuccessfully to keep the terror out of his voice. Jack? You hangin' in there? Talk to me, Jack. Are you okay?"

There is an agonizing pause, then the letters appear slowly:

SHAKING STOPED.

FEEL BETER. SOM LITE BELOW.

"What kind of light?"

LIGHT EVYWHER. BEAWTIFULLL

"He's hallucinating badly."


	11. a threat or a warning

Jack is no longer in pain. His expression is rapt.

Looking down past him to a ghostly landscape. His last flare sputters out, but there is light. Bioluminescent algae carpet the walls of the canyon below him. And he's right... it is beautiful.

The water is so clear we can see down 500 feet past Jack's tiny, silhouetted figure, to a vast landscape faintly revealed in spectral pastels. Barren as the moon but exquisite, serene. Changeless. A place unseen by human eyes.

Like a firefly below, the lights of Big Geek are visible. Jack descends toward the ROV, which has grounded on a narrow shelf. Below the shelf, the wall slopes out, suggesting we are near the bottom of the canyon but can't see it.

One big Geek/MIRV, sitting there like a dumbshit. Jack's feet thump into the sediment next to it, stirring it luminous particles. Touchdown... three and half miles of water over his head. Jack leans over the warhead in a swarm of fireflies.

.

.

.

As Geek prints out. Monk takes the headset gently from Ianto. "Okay, Jack, we'll go step by step. Take the cover plate off the firing box."

A long pause. Then...

PLATE OFF

"All right, Jack, you have to cut the ground wire, not the lead wire..."

.

.

.

Jack is peering into the detonator unit. How bad is he? We can't tell.

"It's the blue wire with the white stripe, not...I repeat... NOT the black wire with the yellow stripe."

Jack is staring. Blinking. The two wire look big as sewer pipes, and they're miles away... way down there where his hands are.

The only light he has left is a CYALUME STICK. He pulls out the little plastic tube. Breaks and shakes. It starts to glow, a tiny wand of green light. He fumbles with his tool pouch, takes out a pair of side-cutters.

CUTING NNOW

He types to them. He reaches into the detonator.

In the green Cyalume glow, the wires look identical. The cutters go over on wire. A long beat. They withdraw, and then go over the other

wire...

He cuts—

.

.

.

Everyone is frozen. Waiting. It's very quiet.

"Would we see the flash?" Ianto whispers fatalistically.

"Through three miles of water?" Monk asks "I don't know."

They're holding their breaths. Then...

STILL HERE

A cheer goes up. Rebel yells.

"Quiet, quiet! Save you air, goddamnit." John roars.

"Jack, give me a reading off you liquid oxygen gauge." Monk asks.

TEN MINUTES WORTH ID SAY.

Ianto goes white.

"It took him over an hour to get down there…" Owen says with horror.

It's hopeless. Ianto grabs the headset from Monk. "Drop you weights and start back now! The gauge could be wrong..."

.

.

Jack is on his knees beside the dead warhead. His expression is enigmatic. He looks around slowly at the luminous canyon. Starts to type.

.

.

The message comes in:

NO. THINK ILL STAY A WHILE. BEAUTIFUL HERE. WORTH ADMISSION

"No! You can make it! You hear me? Drop your weights... you... can breathe shallow... you... it could be wrong..." Ianto's voice has twisted into a sob. he begins to weep, quietly. "Oh God, Jax, please..."

DONT CRY TIGR

A pause. Then the words...

WE KNEW THIS WAS A ONE WAY TICKET WHEN I PUT THIS THING ON. BUT YOU KNOW I HAD TO COME.

Ianto sobs at the mike. The others look away. The signal is weakening.

Toshiko boosts it and the screen clears briefly.

LOVE YOU WIFE.

He stares at the printout.

"Love you… and I am NOT the wife! I am your soul mate and you… you are mine. Forever."

There is no reply.

.

.

.

A tiny figure lies slumped beside the inert ROV, an Indian dying with his horse in the desert.

Jack's eyelids close. His chest barely moving.

A strange illumination bathes his face and his eyes open. He blinks. Weakly, he raises his head, facing the source of the radiance.

A glowing figure hovers before him, like a vision. It seems to be an angel. Seen closer, as it drifts toward him, we see that it is an extraterrestrial being, bioluminescent like some deep-sea fish. Its body and limbs are transparent, and it resembles a figure made of blown glass. A delicate mantle or veil billows out around its like a corona, which pulsates gently, propelling the being with the hypnotic grace of a Spanish dancer. The head is refined and strangely anthropomorphic, with large eyes that convey a cold, dispassionate wisdom.

It is stunningly beautiful.

The creature settles toward him. Unafraid, Jack extends his hand.

Its slender, blown-glass digits grasp his bulky glove. It pulls him up from the benthic ooze and they glide together down the slope, deeper into the abyss.

At the limits of visibility we see faint, glowing forms moving below. They resolve into NTI ships. Tiny ovoids, like the little scoutship that Ianto nearly collided with at the Montana wreck. The larger manta-ships. And others, strangely configured, moving in the darkness below like luminous fish.

Suddenly the darkness explodes with light. A vast, reticulated pattern of brightly glowing lines, like some enormous circuit diagram, appears below them, covering the floor of the abyssal trench. It sweeps outward from the center, as if the light were surging through channels. The NTIs are revealing their home to Jack. The ships move among the spires like air traffic over a major city.

Jack and the creature descend until, between the lines of light, we see a dark surface of inhuman design. The shape extends beyond the limits of visibility.

Towers hundreds of feet high stretch upward from the curving surface. It dwarfs their figures as the descend toward it, approaching an opening that soon yawns like a vast mouth.

They are picking up speed, swept along by a powerful current, into the mouth- like opening.

Jack stares around in awe as smooth, pearlescent walls blur past him. It is a curving three-dimensional maze of tunnels, like a vast circulatory system, where controlled currents of water become freeways in three-dimensional space. Tunnels divide, narrow, and reenter main-routes hundreds of feet across, as the pair race through in a dizzying blur.

Entering a smaller chamber they settle to the floor, and the NTI moves back a few feet.

A shimmering plane or surface appears like a vertical curtain bisecting the chamber. The seawater divides, like the Red Sea, into two rippling walls.

They move apart. Leaving Jack standing in a short, shimmering hallway.

Weakly, he uncouples his helmet and pulls it free. Drops to his knees. Doubles over as spasms wrack him. Breathing fluid explodes from his lungs. He lies gasping and coughing on the floor, dragging in deep breaths of what he can only hope is air.

It is.

Jack slowly recovers, sitting up. His head is clearing. This really is happening. Beyond the shimmering, vertical surface of the water he sees the NTI being joined by others, move or less identical, until a group of seven is gathered watching him.

"Howdy, Uuuh... how you guys doin'?"

His voice echoes metallically in the strange chamber. Soft laps of water from the 'walls'.

In the air a pattern of glowing lines appears, a series of what appears to be circuit diagrams. Jack staggers back from this strange 'screen' hanging in mid-air. The image is about twenty feet across.

There is a rolling jumble of static and interference which resolves into...the face of Dan Rather, doing the evening news. STATIC, then another newscast. And another. Fragments of the same story. The world on the brink of war.

"You watch our TV? That what you're trying to say? That you know what's been going on up there?"

The NTIs are impassive. Static... then another newscast.

This time, we're allowed to focus on the story. An on-the-scene interview outside a high-tech seismology lab. There is an air of hysteria about the scene... technicians running across the background of the shot, people shouting, the reporter jamming his mike at the harried-looking scientist.

"... a Caltech scientist who is among those reporting an unprecedented disturbance in the world's oceans. Dr. Breg, can you give us a clearer explanation then we're getting?"

Berg is edgy and distracted. People keeps handing him pieces of paper, computer hardcopy. The biggest thing in his life is happening "They're acoustic shockwaves, like tsunamis, but with no seismological source. The waves are propagating toward the shorelines of every continent…"

An assistant runs up, face shiny with fear, beckoning. We see that Berg is running scared. The impossible bringing the greatest terror to the rational mind.

"Yeah. I'll be right there... I have to go. Look, we don't know what it is! Okay? Not the slightest goddamn idea!"

The image dissolves into static, fades out. Jack turns to the NTIs. "You're doing it! Right? That's what you're telling me. Yeah, you can control water...that's your technology. But why?"

Static again, then a brilliant flash. Grainy stock film of a hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific.

The film repeats, and then again, faster, and again until is merges into an unbroken white glare. Jack gets the message.

"Hey, you don't know they're really gonna do it." Jack argues "Where do you get off passing judgment on us, when you can't be sure? How do you know?"

The screen exploded into a staccato series of searing images, stark moments from recent history...

US soldiers fighting in Vietnam, street warfare in Beirut, a car bomb in Belfast, a suspect shot in the head in the streets of Saigon, burned and bleeding children, grainy footage of corpses bulldozed into mass graves at Auschwitz, Wermacht soldiers marching in goose-step review, a 13-year-old contra with an AK-47... Just glimpses, strobing... a few frames of each.

But enough. The images continue.

Jack watches as the lights flicker on his face, the ongoing indictment of humanity.

.

.

.

OCEAN FRONT WALK, SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA

A video news crew leaps from a Jet Ranger helicopter in a parking area and runs to set up near the railing, facing the ocean. Pandemonium reigns around them, people running, driving, evacuating inland.

On the horizon, out to sea, a dark line has appeared.

It grows in height as it comes closer, a wall of water stretching across the horizon, already hundreds of feet high and growing.

.

.

.

NEW YORK

looking seaward past the Statue of Liberty, out past the Verazzano Narrows. Stacked up by perspective, the distant wave is a wall of water impossibly high, still miles out.

.

.

.

NAVAL BASE, KAMCHATKA PENINSULA, U.S.S.R.

The scene repeats on the eastern coast of the Kamchatka Penninsula in Russia, where a full moon shimmers along the crest of a vast wave.

Sirens wail as Russian sailors run from the docks of Petropavlovsk Naval Base. Some stand rooted as the black glacier of water, a thousand feet high and growing, thunders toward them in nightmarish slow motion.

.

.

.

OCEAN FRONT, SANTA MONICA

The minicam crew reporter is speaking rapidly, faltering with emotion, his voice cracking like the famous broadcast from the scene of the Hindenburg disaster.

"The horizon has gone dark... the crowd is starting to run... some are just staring, unable to move... the wave... the wave is... it's... I don't know... maybe a thousand feet high lready... getting bigger as I'm watching... still miles out... oh my God, Jesus... I can hear it..."

A roar fills the air, a thunder which drowns out the people's screams, even the rotors of the news chopper as the camera teams scrambles aboard. They leave the announcer standing transfixed, his face blank, eyes tracking upward and upward as the ground begins to shake.

.

.

NEW YORK

The Statue of Liberty looks like a souvenir figurine at the afternoon sun is blocked out by the cresting tsunami, an escarpment of water 2500 feet tall.

.

.

SAN FRANSISCO

The Golden Gate Bridge and the hills of the city, the buildings downtown. Beyond is the wall of sea green which defies our comprehension. The image shakes with the THUNDER.

.

.

.

MALIBU

A diehard surfer looks over his shoulder as the mountain of water which transcends his worst nightmare. He lies paralyzed on his board.

.

.

.

MIAMI

Downtown Miami crouches in terror at the feet of the shimmering monolith.

In a penthouse office suite, an executive watches the wave towering above him, blocking out the sun, a line of raging foam appearing as it arches over, about to break upon the teeming city.

And then...

The wave slows as it crests...

And stops.

IT SIMPLY STOPS.

2600 feet high and motionless except for a shimmering undulation of its surface in the bright sun. There is quiet, a faint wind and calling of confused gulls. Various reactions, as the thunder fades and people recover, only to stand awed before the vast, inexplicable manifestation. A news helicopter passes in front of it like a dragonfly.

.

..

MALIBU

The surfer just blinks, starting.

.

.

.

NEW YORK

On the East Coast it's the same, as the World Trade Centers are dwarfed by a shimmering blue wall which stands... waiting.

.

.

.

PETROPAVLOVSK NAVAL BASE, U.S.S.R.

Russian seamen, lining the harbour breakwall at Petropavlovsk Naval Base on the Kamchatka Peninsula, stare upward at the monolith of water, undulating in the moonlight. It seems poised to crash down, inflicting inconceivable devastation... but it doesn't.

.

.

.

OCEAN FRONT WALK, SANTA MONICA

When all have seen...

The wave soundlessly subsides, slowly slipping back and down until the surface of the sea is normal again.

A crowd of people watching the sea as a handheld camera takes in the scene of shock. Moving from face to face. Various reactions as people respond to what they can only understand as a miracle. The faces... awed, stunned, tear-streaked... laughing. The cameraman is just walking. Some people turn to him and smile, or laugh, or whoop.

A woman is collapsed on a bench, crying.

A man is on his knees, shaking.

Total strangers hug each other.

A black guy, tears pouring down his face, turns to the camera with a beautific grin. "Somebody just laid it down to us, man. Things ain't never gonna be the same!"


	12. hello

Jack sits, shaken, watching the screen, as people react to their deliverance.

He turns to the NTIs.

"Why? You could've done it. Why didn't you?"

The screen darkens. Then letters appears on it, slowly printing out, as if someone was clumsily typing them.

WE KNEW THIS WAS...

And we've seen this before so we know the rest...

WE KNEW THIS WAS A ONE WAY TICKET WHEN I PUT THIS THING ON. BUT YOU KNOW I HAD TO COME.

A pause, then:

LOVE YOU WIFE

The last message expands to fill the entire screen.

Jack stares at the screen, at his message of self-sacrifice, then at the aliens. They bow their heads, just for a moment. A sign of respect.

Jack begins to realize what has happened.

.

.

.

Ianto is slumped in a chair, just staring. Withdrawn.

The others are conserving oxygen and heat, huddling in the dark.

The air is looking pretty thick. The speaker of the hydrophone transceiver crackles to life.

McBride is yelling "Torchwood, do you read? This is Benthic Explorer, over."

John lunges at the mic "Hell yes, we read! Good of you to join us. How's that storm doin'?"

"Well, it's strange... it just kind've blew itself out all of the sudden. We're up here in a flat sea with no wind. But then a lot of weird things've been happening."

"Well, hell, son." John laughs "You better get us a line down here, we're in moderately poor shape."

.

.

Later, Owen, John, and Monk are conferring B.G. on how to get a new

umbilical hooked on. Toshiko is talking to McBride on the hydrophone.

"They figure it was over a half mile high."

"I wish I could have seen it … "She glances down at the telemetry screen, seeing movement. "Hey. Hey! HEY! Look... it's Jack."

"That's impossible." Monk gasps.

Ianto bolts to the screen. Stares at the message printing out. A huge grin wraps around his face as he says incredulously "No it's not."

"What's it say?" McBride asks.

Ianto take the mike and sits before the screen. During the message, his voice will go through an emotional spectrum from confusion to wonder, to a childlike joy.

"It says...

"JAX HARKNESS BACK ON THE AIR/HAVE SOME NEW FRIENDS DOWN HERE/I GUESS THEYVE BEEN HERE AWHILE/THEYVE LEFT US ALONE BUT IT BOTHERS THEM TO SEE US HURTING EACH OTHER/GETTING OUT OF HAND LATELY"

Ianto grins as he reads the next part...

"THEY SENT A MESSAGE/HOPE YOU GOT IT"

"I'd say that's a big 10-4, Jack." John laughs.

"THEY WANT US TO GROW UP A BIT AND PUT AWAY CHILDISH THINGS/OF COURSE ITS JUST A SUGGESTION."

.

.

.

BENTHIC EXPLORER BRIDGE

Beyond the windows the ocean is calm. The sky steel-gray put placid. McBride turns to Commodore DeMarco and the Navy contingent, his eyebrows cocked.

"Looks like you boys might be out of business."

Bendix calls out "Something's going on down there. I'm getting some big readings..."

Bendix is hunched over the sonar, and we can see the screens lit up like a Wurlitzer.

.

.

.

In Torchwood the crew becomes aware of a strange subsonic rumbling. The sonar is going crazy. Toshiko puts the headphones of her passive sonar rig up to her ear, then jerks it away. "Whew! Whatever this is, it's major."

The rumbling increases and a glow diffuses the water.

The glow intensifies until a blinding shaft of light blasts through the viewport, bathing the whole interior in a cold white radiance.

A last message appears on the screen:

KEEP YOU PANTYS ON/YOURE GONNA LOVE THIS

The radiance intensifies. Everyone covers their eyes. It flares to

WHITE-OUT.

.

.

.

EXPLORER BRIDGE

Bendix and the bridge crew are going nuts. All their instruments are pegged.

"Active is pinging back something big... it's enormous! Coming up right under us."

"Where?" DeMarco barks.

"Where? EVERYWHERE!" Bendix looks out the window "Over there! Port bow."

A depression appears in the surface of the sea a hundred yards off, not swirling down like a whirlpool, just dimpling down.

It gets wider. Deeper. Rapidly becomes a yawning pit.

The ocean is OPENING.

Now the surface is churned by turbulence. Slow massive roils of tremendous power boil up from the depths.

McBride leads a mass exodus onto the deck to see better.

The open becomes a roaring maw a hundred yards across.

The ships are like toys on the shimmering rim of the maelstrom.

SOMETHING RISES IN THE CENTER OF THE OPENING. A massive spire. Smoothly curving and iridescent. Off the starboard beam, a quarter mile away, another spire rises. Tons of seawater fall from its sides with a THUNDEROUS ROAR, the energy of Niagara.

Off the port bow... another spire.

And another, beyond the destroyer Albany, dwarfing it.

Six towers... plus one larger, in the center. Rising.

One the Explorer's deck, a shadow engulfs them as the nearest spire blocks out the sun. The air, the sea, the deck... all vibrate with the THUNDER OF CREATION.

And now for the payoff shot: WE'RE HIGH, LOOKING DOWN. THE SPIRES FORM A PERFECT RING A MILE ACROSS. A VAST DARK FORM, LIKE A GREAT SHADOW, RISES FROM THE DEPTHS BENEATH THE SHIPS. THE SPIRES ARE CONNECTED. IT IS ALL ONE.

THE NTI ARK.

It surfaces with slow majesty, gently beaching all the ships on its broad back. We recognize it as the structure into which Jack was led by the angelic being, which we assumed was a city. The Explorer rocks gently on its flat hull, clunking massively to one side as it settles.

The bridge crew watch millions of tons of seawater streaming off the back of the vast, slightly curved hull. The missile cruiser rocks back and forth nearby, high and dry... its prop whining futility.

ON EXPLORER'S DECK, McBride, Bendix, DeMarco, the rest of the Navy

contingent... they're all standing there open-mouthed, in a dream-like daze. Touched by the hand of God.

"Look.." Bendix points.

WHAT THEY SEE - Fifty yards away, between them and the Albany, sits Torchwood Two. It looks like a particularly ugly and unwanted toy, sitting on the glistening plain of the NTI Ark's hull.

The TRIMODULE C hatch at the bottom opens.

John's feet appear, bicycling. He swings down to the pearlescent 'deck'. Stands there blinking in the sunlight, mole-like. Jammer plonks down behind him. He turns, lifts Ianto down. Owen, Sonny, and the rest, emerge into the light of the sun. A deliverance from the blackest night they will ever know.

"We should be dead. We didn't decompress." Ianto says with shock.

"Our blood oughta be fizzin' like a warm, shook-up Coke." John agrees.

"They must've done something to us" Owen shrugs.

Ianto has tears streaming down his cheeks... for the sun, for life, for their deliverance and the larger one he knows has happened, an epiphany for the whole human race.

"Oh, yes. I think you could say that."

He blinks. Seeing something not far away. He gives a little laugh, or something between laughing and crying.

Jack is walking up the curving incline of one of the mouth-like enterances to the NTI structure. His suit is casually unzipped and the FBS helmet dangles from one hand jauntily.

Ianto starts toward him. Breaks into a run. Then stops a few feet from him.

Jack is watching him come to him. His smile, his eyes illuminating him.

Ianto stops and he touches him, lightly. Is this real? They look at each other, wonderingly a moment.

Then laugh.

Ianto sniffs loudly. "Hello, Captain Harkness."

"Hello, Dr. Harkness." Jack whispers "Wifey!"

Their lips meet.


End file.
